Linux

How to install PHP 8.0 on CentOS 8

PHP is one of the popular, general-purpose scripting languages that is suited for web development. Fast, flexible, and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world. The latest version, PHP 8.0, was officially released on November 26th, 2020, bringing significant updates to the 25-year-old programming language. The new update comes with new features and optimizations such as union types, null safe operator, match expression, JIT, and error handling and consistency improvements. In this guide, you will learn how to install PHP 8.0 on CentOS 8.

Step 1: Update CentOS 8

To get started, ensure that your system is updated by running the commands.

$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum upgrade

1 2	$ sudo yum update $ sudo yum upgrade

Step 2: Install Remi Repository

Remi repository is one of the third-party repositories that have the latest update of PHP on Enterprise Linux. To enable the Remi repository on your system, you will need to enable the EPEL repository as shown.

$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

1	$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Next, enable the Remi repository using the command:

$ sudo dnf -y install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

1	$ sudo dnf -y install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Once done, you can see the available PHP version for installation using the command:

$ sudo dnf module list php

1	$ sudo dnf module list php

On the last line, you can see that PHP 8.0 is available through the Remi repository. Thereafter, reset the module and enable PHP 8.0 as shown.

$ sudo dnf module reset php

1	$ sudo dnf module reset php

$ sudo dnf module install php:remi-8.0

1	$ sudo dnf module install php:remi-8.0

Step 3: Install PHP 8 on CentOS for Apache

To install PHP for Apache web server, execute the following command.

$ sudo dnf install php

1	$ sudo dnf install php

After the installation has completed, you can confirm the installation using the following command.

 $ php -v

$ php -v

Step 4: Install PHP 8.0 FPM for Nginx

If you are running Nginx, you need to install PHP-FPM, using the command shown.

 $ sudo dnf install php-fpm

1	$ sudo dnf install php-fpm

Next, enable FPM service to start on boot using the following command:

 $ sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

1	$ sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Once enabled, you can now start the PHP-FPM service as shown:

 $ sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service

1	$ sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service

You can verify the status of PHP-FPM by running the command:

$ sudo systemctl status php-fpm.service

1	$ sudo systemctl status php-fpm.service

Step 5: Install PHP 8 Extensions

PHP extensions are libraries that extend the functionality of PHP. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them. To install a PHP extension, use the syntax: