How to Upgrade PHP 5.4 to PHP 5.6 on CentOS 7.5 (1804)

This tutorial will show you how to upgrade PHP 5.4 to PHP 5.6 on CentOS 7.5.

The assumption is that you are running a stock installation of CentOS, and already have PHP 5.4 installed.

1. Verify current version of PHP

Type in the following to see the current PHP version:

php -v

The output should match this:

PHP 5.4.16 (cli) (built: Apr 12 2018 19:02:01)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

Perfect, let’s continue!

2. Install the REMI and EPEL repositories

If you don’t already have them, install the Remi and EPEL repositories:

rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

Enable the Remi repository globally:

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo

Under the section that looks like [remi] make the following changes:

[remi]
name=Remi's RPM repository for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
#baseurl=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/remi/$basearch/
#mirrorlist=https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/remi/httpsmirror
mirrorlist=http://cdn.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/remi/mirror
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-remi

Also, under the section that looks like [remi-php55] make the following changes:

[remi-php56]
name=Remi's PHP 5.6 RPM repository for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
#baseurl=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php56/$basearch/
#mirrorlist=https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php56/httpsmirror
mirrorlist=http://cdn.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php56/mirror
# NOTICE: common dependencies are in "remi-safe"
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-remi

Type CTRL-O to save and CTRL-X to close the editor

3. Upgrade PHP 5.4 to PHP 5.6

Now we can upgrade PHP. Just type in the following command:

yum -y upgrade php*

Once the upgrade has completed, verify that you have PHP 5.6 installed:

php -v

Output should look like:

PHP 5.6.38 (cli) (built: Oct 24 2018 12:50:38)
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies

Sweet deal, upgrade is done!!