Questions: How to Install PHP on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8?, how to install PHP 7.2 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8?, How to install PHP 7.1 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8?. Welcome to our guide on how to Install PHP 7.2/7.1 on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and CentOS 8 are 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

Install PHP 7.2 on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8

Install PHP 7.2 on RHEL 8 / CentOS 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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