November 4, 2013
Chris
,
11

How to install latest PHP 5.4.x on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

php

Disclaimer: Currently 5.5 is the very latest version of PHP, but the common way to install PHP 5.5 has a major disadvantage: It will also install Apache 2.4 or update your Apache 2.2 (standard!) to version 2.4, which will introduce new apache config files, removing current ones (!). No joke. As many apache tutorials teach people to change stuff in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default (which will be removed during Apache 2.4 installation) it might be a bad choice to install PHP 5.5. If you still want to install PHP 5.5, check these articles:

 

And now, let’s install the latest version of PHP 5.4

There’s an excellent and (usually) hassle-free method to install the latest version of PHP 5.4 with 3 simple bash commands:

1. Add this package-repository to your system. If Ubuntu says that you need to download a key first, then follow the instructions given in the notice.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5-oldstable

If you get an error message now, then please do an update first and install the python-software-properties, that need to be necessary to add a package repository:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

2. Update

sudo apt-get update

Check the available version of PHP (the result is self-explaining, the version on the top is the one that will be installed):

apt-cache policy php5

3. Install PHP 5.4.x

sudo apt-get install php5

Check the installed version of PHP (if this does not show 5.4.x please restart your apache)

php5 -v

Please note: The ondrej/php5-oldstable repository (which is used here) provides the very latest version of the PHP 5.4-branch. Usually a version-update is available a few days after it was been officially released. This is really cool and a big step forward as Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS etc. provide only very old versions by default.
 
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To UPDATE from PHP 5.3 to 5.4:

It’s also possible to update from any PHP version to 5.4 one with exactly the commands above. But, after doing

sudo apt-get install php5

you’ll have to restart the server with

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

or

sudo service apache2 restart

 

This article was written quite a while ago (8 years), please keep this in mind when using the information written here. Links, code and commands might be outdated or broken.

11 Comments

  • Jill Marci Sybalsky
    March 14, 2016 3:42 am

    Upgraded from PHP 5.3 to 5.4 now every website is BROKEN

    php5 -v
    PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/lib/php5/2010052 5+lfs/adodb.so’ – /usr/lib/php5/20100525+lfs/adodb.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0
    PHP 5.4.45-3+deb.sury.org~precise+1 (cli) (built: Jan 7 2016 15:34:33)
    Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
    Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies

    HELP now what?!?!

    FYI- apt-cache policy php5
    php5:
    Installed: 5.4.45-3+deb.sury.org~precise+1
    Candidate: 5.4.45-3+deb.sury.org~precise+1
    Version table:
    *** 5.4.45-3+deb.sury.org~precise+1 0
    500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php5-oldstable/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages
    100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
    5.3.10-1ubuntu3.21 0
    500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main i386 Packages
    500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security/main i386 Packages
    5.3.10-1ubuntu3 0
    500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages

    Reply
  • caifo
    July 16, 2015 8:34 pm

    Thanks!!

    Reply
  • Mark
    June 16, 2015 8:32 am

    Thanks for this article. Been searching loads of sites on how to update my PHP to version 5.4. This worked perfect. Keep up the good work!

    Reply
  • Luis Castillo
    May 12, 2015 1:30 pm

    I make all step and now i have php5.4 in my server but apache cannot load sites, i replace old php.ini with the newer version, i use virtualmind. how to fix? or reverse.

    Reply
  • curtismaurand
    April 22, 2015 4:04 pm

    solved most of my problems except it’s missing adodb.so, pam_auth.so and sasl.so.

    Reply
  • Airton
    November 8, 2014 1:29 pm

    It works!

    Thank you so much!

    Reply
  • Emiliano Viada
    September 1, 2014 4:08 pm

    Great article! thanks

    Reply
  • kenrayner
    May 18, 2014 1:45 am

    Thanks so much – lifesaver.

    Reply
  • FGM
    March 6, 2014 9:23 am

    Note that this will not upgrade your extensions, so if – as likely – you are using PEAR/PECL extension like APC, uploadprogress, mongo, redis, xhprof … you will need to also :
    – update the php5-pear package, which will be broken at this point
    – uninstall your PECL extensions and reinstall them : some can be upgraded, but others are at the same version so just doing a “sudo pecl upgrade ” will not work because PECL will not see the PHP version change as an upgrade. Simpler to just uninstall/install again.

    Reply
  • m8in
    December 18, 2013 2:54 pm

    Thank you! This solved my problems ;-)

    Reply

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