How to Download and Install PHP 7.4 on Centos 9/RHEL 9

PHP 7.4 is a significant update of the PHP language that was officially released on November 28, 2019. This is the last version in the PHP 7 series that brings in arrow functions for cleaner one-liners, preloading for improved performance, typed properties in classes, improved type variances, spread operator in arrays and much more.

In this post, we’ll download and install PHP 7.4 on Centos 9/RHEL 9 servers.

# cat /etc/os-release
NAME="CentOS Stream"
VERSION="9"
ID="centos"
ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"
VERSION_ID="9"

Install PHP 7.4 on Centos 9/RHEL 9

1. First, SSH to your Centos 9/RHEL 9 server using a root account.

2. Update Centos 9/RHEL 9 and install the EPEL repository using the following commands:

sudo dnf -y update --refresh
sudo dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf -y install dnf-utils http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-9.rpm
sudo dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-next-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm

Reference: List of php 7.4 repositories for Centos, RHEL and Fedora.

3. Verify the results of installing the REMI repository, see the contents of the yum.repos.d directory.

ls -l /etc/yum.repos.d

# ls -l /etc/yum.repos.d
total 40
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4245 Sep  6 21:47 centos-addons.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 2600 Sep  6 21:47 centos.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1519 Aug 10 20:11 epel-next.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1621 Aug 10 20:11 epel-next-testing.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1453 Aug 10 20:11 epel.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1552 Aug 10 20:11 epel-testing.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1825 May 23 21:42 remi-modular.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1448 May 23 21:42 remi.repo
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  810 May 23 21:42 remi-safe.repo

4. Enable REMI PHP 7.4 repository on your Centos 9/RHEL 9.

sudo dnf -y update --refresh
sudo dnf -y module enable php:remi-7.4

5. Install PHP 7.4 on Centos 9/RHEL 9 using the following commands:

sudo dnf -y update --refresh
sudo dnf -y install php php-cli

Install PHP 7.4 Extensions

Next, install additional packages of PHP 7.4 using the following command:

sudo yum install php-xxx

Example, install required extensions for WordPress:

yum install php-fpm php-gd php-json php-mbstring php-mysqlnd php-xml php-xmlrpc php-opcache -y

Finally, when you check the installed PHP using the command , the current PHP version should be 7.4.

# php -v
PHP 7.4.32 (cli) (built: Sep 28 2022 09:09:55) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

To view enabled modules, run the command .

# php -m
[PHP Modules]
bz2
calendar
Core
ctype
curl
date
dom
exif
...
sockets
sodium
SPL
...

[Zend Modules]
Zend OPcache

To get the list of installed php extensions, run the following command:

sudo dnf list installed | grep -i php

# sudo dnf list installed | grep -i php
gd3php.x86_64                        2.3.3-7.el7.remi               @remi-safe
oniguruma5php.x86_64                 6.9.8-1.el7.remi               @remi-safe
php.x86_64                           7.4.32-1.el7.remi              @remi-php74
php-cli.x86_64                       7.4.32-1.el7.remi              @remi-php74
php-common.x86_64                    7.4.32-1.el7.remi              @remi-php74
php-fpm.x86_64                       7.4.32-1.el7.remi              @remi-php74
php-gd.x86_64                        7.4.32-1.el7.remi              @remi-php74
...

Alternatively, you can create a bash script to install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 9/RHEL 9 as follows:

#/bin/sh
###Update the CentOS 9 System
sudo dnf -y update --refresh
sudo dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf -y install dnf-utils http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-9.rpm
sudo dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-next-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm

###Enable REMI PHP repository
sudo dnf -y update --refresh
sudo dnf -y module enable php:remi-7.4
sudo dnf -y update --refresh

###Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 9/RHEL 9
sudo dnf -y install php php-cli
yum install php-fpm php-gd php-json php-mbstring php-mysqlnd php-xml php-xmlrpc php-opcache -y

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