Upgrading to PHP8.1 on CentOS 7.x

Laravel 9 which has been released recently dropped the support for PHP7.x, and now it can only run on PHP8.0-PHP8.1.

PHP8.1 is shipped with a few nice features like `Enums`, `readonly` class property and etc. The introduction of the Enums finally allows you to type-hint permissible values accepted by a variable than resort to using docblock typehints, or third-party “fake enum” packages.

Let’s dive into how to upgrade our server to PHP8.1 from PHP8.0.

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
sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager — disable ‘remi-php*’
sudo yum-config-manager — enable remi-php81
sudo yum install -y php81-php php81-php-fpm php81-php-mysql php81-php-gd php81-php-curl php81-php-mbstring php81-php-xml php81-php-bcmath php81-php-sqlite3 php81-php-zip

Two issues encountered during the upgrade
1. Conflicts of library

file /usr/lib64/libzip.so.5 from install of libzip5–1.8.0–2.el7.remi.x86_64 conflicts with file from package libzip-1.3.2–1.amzn2.0.1.x86_64

Solution: remove the existing package then run the installation of php81 again

$ yum remove libzip-1.3.2–1.amzn2.0.1.x86_64

2. php-fpm is not enabled and started properly
Check using systemctl

$ systemctl list-unit-files | grep fpm
php81-php-fpm.service disabled

Let’s enable and starts it, then check its status

$ systemctl enable php81-php-fpm.service
$ systemctl start php81-php-fpm.service
$ systemctl status php81-php-fpm.service
● php81-php-fpm.service — The PHP FastCGI Process Manager
 Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/php81-php-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
 Active: active (running) since Fri 2022–05–06 18:21:15 +08; 6min ago
 Main PID: 16011 (php-fpm)
 Status: “Processes active: 0, idle: 5, Requests: 0, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec”
 Tasks: 6
 Memory: 8.9M
 CGroup: /system.slice/php81-php-fpm.service
 ├─16011 php-fpm: master process (/etc/opt/remi/php81/php-fpm.conf)
 ├─15897 php-fpm: pool www
 ├─15898 php-fpm: pool www
 ├─15899 php-fpm: pool www
 ├─15900 php-fpm: pool www
 └─15901 php-fpm: pool www

Another issue noticed is php-fpm does not read php-fpm config that we have setup in `/etc/php-fpm.d`. From the output of `systemctl status` command, we can see that configuration read is located at `/etc/opt/remi/php81/php-fpm.conf`.

Edit this file to update the conf directory to be read

;include=/etc/opt/remi/php81/php-fpm.d/*.conf
include=/etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf

Now restart the php-fpm service again

$ systemctl restart php81-php-fpm.service 
$ systemctl status php81-php-fpm.service 
● php81-php-fpm.service — The PHP FastCGI Process Manager
 Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/php81-php-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
 Active: active (running) since Fri 2022–05–06 18:30:07 +08; 32min ago
 Main PID: 16296 (php-fpm)
 Status: “Processes active: 0, idle: 21, Requests: 30, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec”
 Tasks: 22
 Memory: 118.6M
 CGroup: /system.slice/php81-php-fpm.service
 ├─16296 php-fpm: master process (/etc/opt/remi/php81/php-fpm.conf)
 ├─16297 php-fpm: pool app.xxx.com
 ├─16298 php-fpm: pool app.xxx.com

Instead of the www pool, we can see that it’s now serving the pool for the website app.xxx.com that we have set up in the pool configuration.

That’s all for it!