(Last Updated On: March 11, 2019)

Questions: How to Install PHP on RHEL 8?, how to install PHP 7.2 on RHEL 8?, How to install PHP 7.1 on RHEL 8?. Welcome to our guide on how to Install PHP 7.2/7.1 on RHEL 8. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is distributed with PHP 7.2 unlike PHP 5.4 which was distributed in RHEL 7. Some of the most notable changes in PHP 7.2 are:

  • FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) is used by default. This is safe for use with a threaded http
  • When the max_execution_timeconfiguration variable is changed, its value should match the httpd ProxyTimeout setting
  • PHP script warning and errors are no longer logged to,/var/log/httpd/error.log they are now logged to the file/var/log/php-fpm/www-error.log.
  • The php-flag and php_value variables should be set in the pool configuration file /etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf. They are no longer configured in the httpd configuration files.
  • The user running PHP scripts is now configured in the FPM pool configuration file –  /etc/php-fpm/d/www.conf. The default user is apache.
  • Whenever you install a new extension or change PHP configuration file, you’ll need to restart the php-fpm service

Extensions removed on PHP 7.2

Below are the extensions that have been deprecated in PHP 7.2

  • memcache
  • zip
  • mysql (note that the mysqli and pdo_mysql extensions are still available, provided by php-mysqlnd package)
  • aspell

Both PHP 7.2 and PHP 7.1 should be available on the AppStream repository:

$ sudo yum repolist

You can confirm enabled and default PHP module by running the following command in your terminal.

$ sudo yum module list | grep php 
php   7.1  devel, minimal, default [d]               PHP scripting language                                             
php   7.2 [d][e]  devel, minimal, default [d] [i]    PHP scripting language

For the installation of PHP 7.3 on RHEL 8, check: How to Install PHP 7.3, PHP 7.3-FPM on RHEL 8

How to Install PHP 7.2 on RHEL 8

Install PHP 7.2 on RHEL 8 by running the command below

sudo yum module install php:7.2

The command above will install a number of PHP extensions as well required for different integrations.

After the installation is complete, check your PHP version using the following command:

$ php -v
PHP 7.2.11 (cli) (built: Oct  9 2018 15:09:36) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

As seen in the output above, we have PHP 7.2.11 on our RHEL 8 system.

Start and Configure php-fpm service

Now activate php-fpm service

sudo systemctl enable --now php-fpm

Confirm service status

$ systemctl status php-fpm
 ● php-fpm.service - The PHP FastCGI Process Manager
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/php-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
    Active: active (running) since Mon 2019-03-11 00:23:55 EAT; 3min 16s ago
  Main PID: 32105 (php-fpm)
    Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 5, Requests: 0, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec"
     Tasks: 6 (limit: 11510)
    Memory: 24.1M
    CGroup: /system.slice/php-fpm.service
            ├─32105 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php-fpm.conf)
            ├─32106 php-fpm: pool www
            ├─32107 php-fpm: pool www
            ├─32108 php-fpm: pool www
            ├─32109 php-fpm: pool www
            └─32110 php-fpm: pool www
 Mar 11 00:23:55 rhel8.local systemd[1]: Starting The PHP FastCGI Process Manager…
 Mar 11 00:23:55 rhel8.local systemd[1]: Started The PHP FastCGI Process Manager.

Note that by default PHP FPM service listens on a Unix socket – /run/php-fpm/www.sock

Installing PHP 7.2 extensions

Use the syntax:

sudo yum install php-<entension>

Example below is for installing standard PHP extensions.

sudo yum -y install php php-cli php-fpm php-mysqlnd php-zip php-devel php-gd php-mbstring php-curl php-xml php-pear php-bcmath php-json

How to Install PHP 7.1 on RHEL 8

If you would like to install PHP 7.1, it is available on the AppStream repository as well. Install PHP 7.1 using the command below:

sudo yum module install php:7.1

Verify PHP version using:

$ php -v
PHP 7.1.20 (cli) (built: Jul 19 2018 06:17:27) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

You can easily switch back to PHP 7.2 using:

sudo yum module install php:7.2

Testing your PHP installation

Finally, let’s test to confirm that our PHP is working as expected. Install Apache HTTP Server using:

sudo yum module install httpd

Then Active the service

sudo systemctl enable --now httpd

Create a test PHP page

echo '<?php phpinfo();' >/var/www/html/info.php

Open the server URL:

Enable http port on the firewall

sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=http --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

In our next articles, we will cover the installation Nginx web server and configuring it to serve PHP web pages.

Check other guides:

How to Install Apache with mod_ssl & mod_http2 on RHEL 8

How to Install PHP 7.3, PHP 7.3-FPM on RHEL 8

Install Docker and Docker Compose on RHEL 8

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