October 19, 2014
Chris
,
33

How to setup / install PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with PHP 5.5 by default, but if you want to use PHP 5.6, then it’s just 3 lines on the command line away. Please note that this tutorial is for installing on a fresh and untouched Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, not for updating an existing installation of PHP. This works perfectly on every tested Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

1. Add PHP 5.6 package sources to your system:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5-5.6

and confirm with ENTER. If you get an error here, you need to install python-software-properties first (and then do the line above again):

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

and confirm with “y” and ENTER. You’ll now already see “PHP 5.6.x” in the scrolling installation logs. To properly check the installed version of PHP do:

php5 -v

Voila! By the way, this extremely-easy-to-install PHP 5.6 package was created by Ondřej Surý, so consider donating him a beer or a coffee via his donation page.

This article was written quite a while ago (9 years), please keep this in mind when using the information written here. Links, code and commands might be outdated or broken.

33 Comments

  • Khayrul
    October 28, 2017 10:04 am

    Remove installed PHP and manually install PHP

    Reply
  • Jeromin
    October 10, 2017 11:42 pm

    Actually the PPA has been renamed and is obsolete. The new one is ppa:ondrej/php
    See https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/ubuntu/php for reference

    Reply
  • Tim Ng
    June 25, 2017 12:00 pm

    php5 -v

    is this the right command?

    Reply
    • Chris
      June 25, 2017 10:22 pm

      The right command for what ?

      Reply
  • gvanto
    April 27, 2017 6:27 pm

    Thanks very helpful. Btw on Ubuntu 14.04 after I ran “apt-get install python-software-properties” still got error “apt-get-repository Command not found”. Needed to install “apt-get install software-properties-common” … then it worked

    Reply
  • a2htray
    April 26, 2017 3:41 am

    nice blog,

    Reply
  • thức ăn bổ phế
    March 23, 2017 10:12 pm

    I am really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your
    blog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself?
    Either way keep up the excellent quality writing,
    it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one nowadays.

    Reply
  • mal
    February 13, 2017 4:30 am

    soap does not work? any help

    Reply
  • Joel
    June 23, 2016 2:29 pm

    Worked great, thank you!
    Also, you’ve got the wrong dontation link for Orej, it’s https://donate.sury.org

    Reply
  • Ricardo Augusto Coelho
    June 14, 2016 2:21 pm

    That PPA (ondrej/php5-5.6) is now deprecated. You should use this one instead:
    $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

    And then, update and install:
    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get install php5.6

    Reply
  • Mohamed kaptan
    May 25, 2016 3:56 pm

    thanks

    Reply
  • Danilo Nascimento
    May 13, 2016 5:05 am

    Thanks!

    Reply
  • Theodore R. Smith
    April 12, 2016 6:24 pm

    This doesn’t seem to have php-fpm???

    Reply
  • Roman
    March 27, 2016 6:41 pm

    thanks, it worked for ubuntu 14.04

    Reply
  • MewX
    March 17, 2016 5:04 am

    Worked perfectly. But it doesn’t depend on `python-software-properties`.
    The command `apt-get install php5` runs on my ubuntu-15-minimal successfully.

    Reply
  • Gohanzo
    February 19, 2016 12:30 am

    Thanks, it helps a lot ;)

    Reply
  • Vlad Kanash
    January 30, 2016 2:38 pm

    Didn’t help. I get php 5.2 installed.

    Reply
    • Laura Trejo
      May 10, 2016 11:53 pm

      got the same

      $ php -v

      PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.22 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Apr 20 2016 12:31:15)

      Reply
  • Mr Mackey
    September 18, 2015 10:51 pm

    They went away but was getting these quite a bit earlier, mmmkay:

    Cannot access PPA (https://launchpad.net/api/1.0/~ondrej/+archive/php5-5.69) to get PPA information, please check your internet connection.

    Reply
  • farib
    August 12, 2015 4:04 pm

    I did all this. and it says php5 already installed. i tried to update too. but still php 5.5.9

    Reply
  • Ron
    July 30, 2015 12:14 am

    Hmmm. Received an error on the initial command, then did the
    ‘sudo apt-get update’
    That generated this error:
    …
    Reading package lists… Done
    W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net trusty Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 4F4EA0AAE5267A6C

    Never had an error on ‘apt-get update’ before. Did 1st command cause this? Then
    ‘sudo apt-get install python-software-properties’ updates nothing.

    Reply
  • tleb
    July 19, 2015 8:43 pm

    Wow. I had done a `apt-get install lamp-server^` and realised it was 5.9. I needed 5.6 (that `foo(…$args)` is quite useful :D) and saw your article, did as instructed, expected everything to break, but no! No Apache configuration change, no need to restart Apache, just refreshed my `phpinfo()` page and the version had changed. Amazing job by the creator of this repo!

    Reply
  • Rohit Arora
    May 23, 2015 7:13 am

    You rock dude

    Reply
  • Bishal Paudel
    May 18, 2015 10:55 am

    Perfect. Thanks!

    Reply
  • Michael
    May 17, 2015 8:47 pm

    Unfortunately doesn’t work on my raspi… any suggestions?

    W: Fehlschlag beim Holen von http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php5-5.6/ubuntu/dists/wheezy/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found
    W: Fehlschlag beim Holen von http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php5-5.6/ubuntu/dists/wheezy/main/binary-armhf/Packages 404 Not Found

    The warnings are (half) in german, but what they say is that the packages could not be found…
    However it is working on my Ubuntu system, therefore i have no idea whats wrong with the raspberry.

    Reply
  • Vincent
    January 5, 2015 8:56 pm

    Fantastic. Worked perfectly. Thanks!

    Reply

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