How To Install PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 8

In this article, we want to teach you How To Install PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 8.

PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language that many devs use for web development. It is also a general-purpose language that you can use to make lots of projects, including Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs).

In this guide, you will learn to install the latest stable version of PHP on AlmaLinux 8.

At the current time, PHP 8.1 is the latest stable version.

How To Install PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 8

before you start to install PHP 8.1 on your server, you need to log in to your server as a non-root user with sudo privileges. To do this, you can follow our article the Initial Server Setup with AlmaLinux 8.

Now follow the steps below to complete this guide.

Install PHP Remi Repository on AlmaLinux 8

First, you need to update your local package index with the following command:

sudo dnf update -y

Then, you need to install the Epel repository on AlmaLinux 8 with the command below:

sudo dnf install epel-release

Currently, PHP 8.1 is not featured in AlmaLinux’s AppStream. So you can install PHP from (Remi) repository that deploys the latest PHP 8.1 builds. To do this, run the following command:

sudo dnf install dnf-utils http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Again update your local package index to update your repository:

sudo dnf update -y

Now you need to remove the PHP and PHP-FPM previous version if you have them installed on your server. To do this run the following command:

sudo dnf remove php php-fpm -y

Then remove the rest of the package extensions with the command below:

sudo dnf remove php* -y

To reset the PHP module list on AlmaLinux 8, you can use the following command:

sudo dnf module list reset php -y

Output
AlmaLinux 8 - AppStream
Name Stream Profiles Summary
php 7.2 [d] common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php 7.3 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php 7.4 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language

Remi's Modular repository for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64
Name Stream Profiles Summary
php remi-7.2 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php remi-7.3 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php remi-7.4 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php remi-8.0 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language
php remi-8.1 common [d], devel, minimal PHP scripting language

Hint: [d]efault, [e]nabled, [x]disabled, [i]nstalled

As you can see above, the (d) tag is next to PHP 7.2, which you will need to reset and change to install PHP 8.1

Now you need to enable PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 8 with the command below:

sudo dnf module enable php:remi-8.1

Installing PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 8

At this point, you have added the Remi PHP repository and enabled PHP 8.1 to be the default version on your system, you can install PHP 8.1 with the following command:

sudo dnf install php

If you would like to install the most commonly used extensions for PHP 8.1, use the following command:

sudo dnf install php-cli php-fpm php-curl php-mysqlnd php-gd php-opcache php-zip php-intl php-common php-bcmath php-imap php-imagick php-xmlrpc php-json php-readline php-memcached php-redis php-mbstring php-apcu php-xml php-dom php-redis php-memcached php-memcache

Finally, you can use the following command for anyone interested in installing the development branch:

sudo dnf install php-devel -y

To verify your PHP 8.1 installation on AlmaLinux 8, you can check its version:

php -v

Output
PHP 8.1.3 (cli) (built: Feb 16 2022 01:00:24) (NTS gcc x86_64)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.1.3, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v8.1.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

By default on AlmaLinux 8, the PHP-FPM service is designed to be run (Apache) user. If you are using Nginx you need to make configuration changes at (www.conf).

You can open the file with your favorite text editor, here we use vi:

sudo vi /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Find the user and group directives and change them to Nginx as shown below:

user = nginx
group = nginx

When you are done, save and close the file.

Reload the PHP-FPM service to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm

The Nginx server block needs the following example below for Nginx to process the PHP files.

Below is an example for all server {} blocks that process PHP files that need the location ~ .php$ added.

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
        fastcgi_index   index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }