How to Install PHP 7.4 on Centos 7/RHEL 7

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 7/RHEL 7 servers.

# cat /etc/centos-release
CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core)
# php -v
-bash: php: command not found

Install PHP 7.4 on Centos 7

1. First, SSH to your Centos 7/RHEL 7 server using a root account.

2. Update CentOS 7 and install the EPEL repository using the following commands:

sudo yum update -y	
sudo yum install epel-release -y
sudo yum -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo yum -y install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.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 112
...
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  456 Sep  2 09:05 remi-php54.repo
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1314 Sep  2 09:05 remi-php70.repo
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1314 Sep  2 09:05 remi-php71.repo
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1314 Oct 24 06:03 remi-php72.repo
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1314 Sep  2 09:05 remi-php73.repo
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1314 Oct 24 08:43 remi-php74.repo
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1314 Sep  2 09:05 remi-php80.repo
...

4. Enable REMI PHP7.4 repository.

sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php74	

5. Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 7.

sudo yum update
sudo yum install php php-cli -y

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 php -v, 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 -m
[PHP Modules]
bz2
calendar
Core
ctype
curl
date
dom
exif
...
...

[Zend Modules]
Zend OPcache

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

yum list installed | grep -i php

# yum 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
php-json.x86_64                      7.4.32-1.el7.remi              @remi-php74
...

Alternatively, you can create a bash script to install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 7/RHEL 7 as follows:

#/bin/sh
###Update the CentOS 7 System
sudo yum update -y	
sudo yum install epel-release -y
sudo yum -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo yum -y install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

###Enable REMI PHP repository
sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php74	

###Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 7/RHEL 7
sudo yum update
sudo yum install php php-cli -y
sudo yum install php-fpm php-gd php-json php-mbstring php-mysqlnd php-xml php-xmlrpc -y