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 (3 years), please keep this in mind when using the information written here. Links, code and commands might be outdated or broken.

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33 Comments

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
- anD
  
  February 17, 2017 12:58 pm
  
  Yes, please update the ppa to:
  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
  
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/40567133/cannot-add-ppa-ppaondrej-php5-5-6
  
  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
SpeakerPL

August 29, 2015 7:53 pm

“Kurwa nie działa” means “The whore does not work”, but I think he thought about “Kurwa, nie działa” what is equal to “Fuck, it does not work” ;)
And I think he is not a troll but stupid kid :)

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
Cute Sama

May 8, 2015 11:17 am

Amazing *thumbs up*

Reply
Vincent

May 2, 2015 2:20 am

Well I still found it helpful :) Likely saved me several hours of having to figure this out on my own. I even have this saved in my personal notes.

Reply
Vincent

January 5, 2015 8:56 pm

Fantastic. Worked perfectly. Thanks!

Reply