How To Install PHP 8 on AlmaLinux 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 8 on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a popular scripting language that powers the dynamic content of millions of websites and apps such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of PHP 8 on an AlmaLinux 8.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: AlmaLinux 8.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install PHP 8 on AlmaLinux 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install dnf-utils

Step 2. Enable EPEL and REMI Repository.

Now we run the following commands to add EPEL and REMI repo on your AlmaLinux system:

sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Next, run the following commands to reset the PHP module and install PHP 8 from the remi-8.0 module:

sudo dnf module reset php
sudo dnf module install php:remi-8.0

Step 3. Installing PHP on AlmaLinux 8.

Now we run the commands below to install PHP:

sudo dnf install php

Once the PHP packages are installed successfully then execute the below command to verify the PHP version:

php -v

Output:

[root@idroot.us ~]# php -v
PHP 8.0.2 (cli) (built: May 10 2021 16:46:42) ( NTS gcc x86_64 )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.0.2, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v8.0.2, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

Step 4. Installing PHP 8 Extensions.

Install PHP extensions are simple with the following syntax:

sudo dnf install php-(extension_name)

Below example install PHP and commonly used PHP extensions:

sudo dnf install php php-cli php-fpm php-mysqlnd php-zip php-devel php-gd php-mcrypt php-mbstring php-curl php-xml

Once successfully installed, check all available PHP extensions:

php --modules

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PHP. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing PHP 8 on your AlmaLinux 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official PHP website.