PHP 5.3 on CentOS/RHEL 5.8 via Yum

I have compiled the latest PHP version, 5.3.18, and put it in the Webtatic repository for easy installation. It is compiled for CentOS 5 i386 and x86_64, and the source RPMS are provided in the repo, if anyone wants to compile it for another OS or architecture.

Update 2012-03-04 – Webtatic now has released PHP 5.4.0 for CentOS/RHEL 6
Update 2010-03-03 – I’ve added both apc 3.1.3p1 beta (php-pecl-apc in yum) and eAccelerator 0.9.6 (php-eaccelerator in yum) RPMs to the repository, they are compiled for (and work on) php 5.3.x
Update 2009-09-01 – Added a note about deprecated errors, and how to silence them. Also I have included a tip that might help those of you struggling to install.
Update 2009-07-03 – I updated the version to PHP 5.3, which was released a few days before. This includes many new features such as closures, namespaces, and packaged scripts in phar files, which I’ll blog about soon. Check out PHP changelog for more details.

I have also included the same php extensions I mentioned in my other article, php-mcrypt, php-mhash (in PHP 5.2), php-mssql and php-tidy
To install, first you must install the yum repository information:

rpm -Uvh http://repo.webtatic.com/yum/centos/5/latest.rpm

Now you can install php by doing:

yum --enablerepo=webtatic install php

Or update an existing installation of php, which will also update all of the other php modules installed:

yum --enablerepo=webtatic update php

Packages

Package	Provides
php	mod_php
php-bcmath
php-cli	php-cgi, php-pcntl, php-readline
php-common	php-api, php-bz2, php-calendar, php-ctype, php-curl, php-date, php-exif, php-fileinfo, php-ftp, php-gettext, php-gmp, php-hash, php-iconv, php-json, php-libxml, php-openssl, php-pcre, php-pecl-Fileinfo, php-pecl-phar, php-pecl-zip, php-reflection, php-session, php-shmop, php-simplexml, php-sockets, php-spl, php-tokenizer, php-zend-abi, php-zip, php-zlib
php-dba
php-devel
php-eaccelerator
php-embedded	php-embedded-devel
php-fpm
php-gd
php-imap
php-intl
php-ldap
php-mbstring
php-mcrypt
php-pecl-apc
php-pecl-memcache
php-pecl-xdebug
php-mssql	php-pdo_dblib
php-mysql	php-mysqli, php-pdo_mysql, php_database
php-odbc	php-pdo_odbc, php_database
php-pdo
php-pgsql	php-pdo_pgsql, php_database
php-process	php-posix, php-sysvmsg, php-sysvsem, php-sysvshm
php-pspell
php-recode
php-snmp
php-soap
php-suhosin
php-tidy
php-xml	php-dom, php-domxml, php-wddx, php-xsl
php-xmlrpc
php-zts

“Depsolving” problems

If you get depsolving problems when updating, you may have currently installed some extensions that have been removed, e.g. php-mhash, php-ncurses.
You will need to remove them before upgrading.

yum remove php-mhash php-ncurses

Timezone Errors

If you have not set the default timezone for dates, you will get PHP warnings and in some cases fatal errors (e.g. when using the DateTime object). PHP will by default use the system’s timezone if not a fatal error, however either in your application or the php.ini, you should set the setting date.timezone. It’s more ideally set in the application, which should be aware of it’s own timezone setting.

Deprecated Errors

Once you are running the new version, you may get “deprecated” errors in your error logs. This isn’t bad, it just means to tell you that some of the functions you are using are no longer prefered, and may be removed in a future major release. An example of this is the ereg functions. Preg functions are prefered over these, as they are much faster and more powerful, and in all cases do at least the same thing.
If upgrading the functions are not an option, and you would like to hide the deprecated errors from your error log, for example on a production server, just edit your /etc/php.ini file, find the line:

error_reporting  =  E_ALL

and replace to:

error_reporting  =  E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED

PHP 5.2.17

I have previously been maintaining PHP 5.2.* releases, but since it is now end-of-line, there are no security fixes for known critical security issues. I wouldn’t recommend using these anymore because of this, however they are still in the repository for existing users relying on them.