Virtualmin + CentOS 7 + PHP7 the right way?

The remi repo blog now shows php7 as ‘remi-safe’ repository release, elevated from the ‘test’ repo.
Remi’s blog says " php5.5 is Dead’. a pretty bold statement, and says it is no longer being maintained. However, the site continues to support downloads.

I upgraded the Centos 7 standard to PHP5.6 and then installed PHP7 on the VPS using the steps found here. I then installed NGNX, CSF (Configserver Firewall), and all appear to be working.

Sorry for opening an old thread. I want to install PHP7 alongside older versions but following the SCL route the range of PHP modules for PHP7 is pretty limited.

Does @cognosco’s method using Remi and yum install php70… etc still give me the ability to allocate PHP version per virtual server?

Many thanks

Hi, the author of the topic here.
This same config is still running very well here! It’s still my main server and one year and a lot of updates later it is still running strong :slight_smile:

Thank you for the reply cognosco - it’s good to hear this is running so well for you. What I’m wondering is if you still have the ability to allocate PHP version per virtual server?: Virtualmin > Server Configuration > PHP Versions > Version

Yes, this does still work perfect. I can choose between 5.6 and 7.

Perfect - thanks again for responding to an older thread :slight_smile:

I have installed Virtualmin v6 LEMP stack. Then I tried various upgrades of PHP including both replacements with Remi’s PHP7.1 and also multiple PHP versions. Some observations:

  • Centos 7 continued packaging of PHP 5.4 sucks big time. What a waste since this will be obsolete before long. Maybe that is to satisfy lingering users. I don’t know why Centos 7 repo doesn’t come with PHP5.6 and PHP 7 out of the box.
  • If you are installing a new server to support fresh scripts such as CMS with related plugins that are recent to within the past year, you may find there are no incompatibility issues with running just PHP7/7.1.
  • If the server needs to support older scripts, PHP7/7.1 may break the applications such as web servers/CMS.
  • Keeping PHP5.4 will run into problems as PHPMyAdmin, popular CMS including Wordpress and Joomla cannot be used while transferring of the CMS that use older scripts may not run on the server stack.
  • My experience is that Virtualmin’s install of PHP5.4 plus PHP7 is not a good choice. PHP5.4 must be upgraded to PHP5.6. PHP7 is OK but my preference is to install Remi’s repo, enable PHP5.6, upgrade the Centos standard 5.4 to PHP5.6, remove or leave the redundant PHP7, and then install Remi’s PHP7.1.x as the additional version.
  • That seems to work OK. given that many scripts will not run on PHP5.4 and it is no longer supported, this PHP5.6 + PHP7.1 multi-version will allow support of older scripts. This can be done by setting up of an alternate VM template with PHP.5.6 chosen.

It would be great if Virtualmin/Webmin fully supported NGINX with multiple versions of PHP so that the configuration could be chosen/changed after the install of a virtual server. The PHP selection does not work. NGINX with PHP7 have become a mainstream choice alongside LAMP. More new servers are reportedly installed using LEMP/NGINX and PHP7/7.1 use has accelerated.

Hello, when the execution mode is on PHP-FPM, how to choose the php version per virtual server? At the moment this is not possible by Virtualmin option and this is an issue in my opinion…
thanks

I suggest you must install virtualmin first.

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