August 22, 2013
Chris
,
33

How to install / setup PHP 5.5.x on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

mod-rewrite-ubuntu-14-04-lts

Please note: This works fine. But this package will also upgrade your apache to version 2.4 which has different config files than apache 2.2 and even deletes stuff, like /etc/apache2/sites-available/default when upgrading. This may result in a loss of your apache settings (vhost, mod_rewrite stuff etc.). Be aware of that ! This shit cost me a full weekend. This affects only upgrades, not fresh installs for sure. Update: This is a known bug (more here), I’ll keep this post updated…

 

How to install

There’s an excellent and (usually) hassle-free method to install the latest version of PHP5 (which is 5.5.3 when i’m writing this) 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

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

3. Install PHP

sudo apt-get install php5

Check the installed version of PHP via

php5 -v

Please note: The ondrej/php5 repository (which is used here) provides the very latest version of PHP. Usually the new version of PHP 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.

 

To UPDATE from PHP 5.3 / 5.4 to PHP 5.5:

It’s also possible to update from any PHP version to the latest 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

 

By the way, I’ve also written a tutorial on “How to setup latest version of PHP 5.5 on Debian Wheezy 7.0/7.1/7.2 (and how to fix the GPG key error)“, which is different from this here.

 

This article was written quite a while ago (10 years), please keep this in mind when using the information written here. Links, code and commands might be outdated or broken.

33 Comments

  • srini
    May 15, 2018 1:37 pm

    sudo apt-get install -y php5.5
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    E: Unable to locate package php5.5
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘php5.5’
    E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php5.5’

    Reply
  • James Parsons
    October 23, 2015 1:24 am

    This didn’t work. Thank the good Lord for Virtual Machine snapshots. :)

    Reply
  • David
    September 25, 2015 4:20 pm

    Thanks a lot for this simple solution.
    I was trying to install symfony 2 which need at least php 5.4 on ubuntu 12 LTS :

    Symfony Installer requires PHP 5.4 version or higher and your system has
    PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.19 version installed.

    To solve this issue, upgrade your PHP installation or install Symfony manually
    executing the following command:

    composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition

    Reply
    • davidfoucart
      September 28, 2015 2:01 am

      Finally , this was not working have reinstalled a brand new ubuntu 12.04 LTS

      installation httpd-2.4.16 + php-5.6.13 + symphony-2.7.3
      ——————————————————-
      (Brand new Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
      with kernel : 3.2.0-23-generic-pae)

      1. install apache.
      ——————

      download httpd-2.4.16.tar.gz
      (http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi#apache24)

      # apt-get install libapr1util-dev
      (needed for apache)

      # tar zxvf httpd-2.4.16.tar.gz
      # cd httpd-2.4.16
      # ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/apache2
      # make
      # make test
      # make install

      test : # /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
      and test the default ‘It works’ web page
      located in /usr/local/apache2/htdocs

      2. install php. (minimal configuration for symfony)
      —————————————————

      2.1. Pre-requisites
      ————–

      # apt-get install libxml2-dev
      (needed for php)

      download zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz
      (http://zlib.net/zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz)
      (needed for symfony with linux systems)

      # tar zxvf zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz
      # cd zlib-1.2.8
      # ./configure
      # make test
      # make install

      this create libz.so.1.2.8 in /usr/local/lib

      2.2. php-5.6.13 installation
      ———————–

      download php-5.6.13.tar.gz
      (http://fr2.php.net/distributions/php-5.6.13.tar.gz)

      # tar zxvf php-5.6.13.tar.gz
      # cd php-5.6.13
      # ./configure –with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs –with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/lib
      # make
      # make test
      # make install

      test : # php -v

      # cd /usr/local/apache2/conf/
      and add

      AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml
      AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

      in httpd.conf file

      test by adding an index.php file with in it
      in /usr/local/apache2/htdocs

      3. symfony 2.7.3 installation and demo test
      ——————————————-

      # apt-get install curl

      modify /usr/local/lib/php.ini, uncomment date.timezone and fix it
      (see http://php.net/date.timezone)
      for example : date.timezone = ‘Europe/Brussels’

      # curl -LsS http://symfony.com/installer -o /usr/local/bin/symfony
      # chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/symfony
      # mkdir /home/your_home/symfony_test
      # chmod 777 /home/your_home/symfony_test
      # exit
      $ cd /home/your_home/symfony_test
      $ php /usr/local/bin/symfony demo
      $ cd symfony_demo
      $ php app/console server:run

      console server:run
      Server running on http://127.0.0.1:8000

      Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

      Reply
  • Chris S
    June 19, 2015 2:18 pm

    I updated my php from 5.10 to 5 but now I get the error message:

    phpMyAdmin – Error

    The mysqli extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration.

    Any assistance will be much appreciated.

    Reply
  • Lorenzo
    April 21, 2015 11:13 am

    about the orange note at beginning of the article… is it fixed now, right?

    Reply
  • jakob.j
    April 19, 2015 1:52 pm

    Hi,

    I have some trouble: after I added the repository,
    when I do: “apt-get install php5”,
    I get: “php5 is already the newest version.”
    But it’s still PHP 5.3

    Any suggestions? Thanks.
    EDIT: btw I use Ubuntu 10.04

    Reply
  • elia
    August 4, 2014 8:28 am

    followed the instructions… When I do ‘php5 -v’ I still get PHP 5.3.2… help …

    Reply
    • aduchesneau
      February 13, 2015 7:42 pm

      me too. Had any clue?

      Reply
  • HL
    June 26, 2014 10:19 pm

    Great. Just what I needed.

    Reply
  • Lars Müller
    June 16, 2014 11:38 am

    hello, after an Update from 5.3 to 5.5 i get these error:
    Output of config test was:

    apache2: Syntax error on line 140 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Syntax error on line 2 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/fcgid_easyscp.load: Cannot load /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_fcgid.so into server: /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_fcgid.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    the mod_fcgid.so cannot load. How can i fix this?

    Reply
    • Lars Müller
      June 16, 2014 12:21 pm

      i do that…i didn`t find any notice of this error :-/

      Reply
  • société offshore
    February 27, 2014 6:59 pm

    This worked great, thanks a lot – saved me a headache.

    Reply
  • Marvoh
    February 5, 2014 9:10 am

    sudo: add-apt-repository: command not found on ubuntu server 12

    Reply
  • Yasha Podeswa
    February 4, 2014 5:47 pm

    Thanks for the post, very helpful! I’m currently running PHP 5.3.10, and I have also installed:

    php5-pspell
    php5-curl
    php5-gd
    php5-intl
    php5-mysql
    php5-xmlrpc
    php5-ldap

    Will updating to 5.5 with the above method break any of the above? I’d just try myself, but I don’t want to break my production server :)

    Reply
    • Chris
      February 4, 2014 6:02 pm

      Sorry, I cannot answer this :( … But in general you should not update a production server withouth being 99% sure everything runs fine. Make a perfect copy of that server and try out :)

      Reply
      • Yasha Podeswa
        February 5, 2014 7:57 am

        Good call, thanks Chris!

        Reply
  • Ilias
    January 6, 2014 11:25 am

    Thank you very much!

    Reply
  • Nicholas O.
    October 12, 2013 1:19 am

    Hi,

    What if I already have v5.3.6 on my LEMP Ubuntu 12.04?
    Is there a way to remove that completely or with it resolve itself?

    Thanks.

    Reply
    • Chris
      October 15, 2013 3:51 am

      Hey Nicholas, I just tried this out: Works perfectly ! I installed the standard packaged PHP version (5.3.10) in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and did exactly the stuff written in the above article. You’ll need to restart the server afterwards. Thanks for the interesting idea, I will put this into the article.

      Reply
      • Nicholas O.
        October 17, 2013 5:09 am

        Hi Chris,

        Thanks for coming back. I actually uninstalled v5.3.6 and then used the steps you outlined to add the v5.5 ppa. Good news is it works and I got Zend Opcache (Zend Optimizer+) running. Typical load on my DB is now under 10MB (was about 35MB previously). The Opcode Cache (APC) on v5.3.6 was bringing down my server for some strange reason.

        Anyway, thought be useful if someone running Nginx (instead of Apache) lands on your site.

        Restart server command in terminal (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)

        1. sudo service nginx restart
        or
        2. sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

        Reply
        • Chris
          October 17, 2013 1:45 pm

          Wow, excellent! Btw just to clarify: No need to uninstall anything,
          sudo apt-get install php5
          will update PHP without any problems.

          Reply

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