CentOS 5 supports PHP 5.1.6, and will not ever officially support the newer versions of PHP.  As stated in the CentOS wiki “As with each other program in CentOS, the version numbers of released software will not change over the life time of a CentOS product.”  So in short, the yum repos we all know and love have no intention of including the new PHP software.

But what can we do?  Well, we’re Linux users.  We can do whatever we want!

Here at The Linux Fix we have a talented bloke named Greg who has worked on this problem in the past when he created a yum repo for PHP 5.3.5 for use with CentOS.  Well, what’s changed since then?  Not much actually!  In fact, most of the info here will just be the same helpful tips he wrote back in February.  Except now it’s with an updated repo for 5.3.6, with additional information for TLF clients!  (oh look, he beat me to this post!)

So first things first, you’ll need to add our TLF branded repo to your yum repository list.  We keep all that tidy PHP goodness over here at yum.thelinuxfix.com (with appropriate rpms for 32 and 64-bit systems).

Install Instructions:

As root run:

64-bit:
rpm -Uvh http://yum.thelinuxfix.com/RHEL/5/x86_64/tlf-release-1-2.noarch.rpm

32-bit:
rpm -Uvh http://yum.thelinuxfix.com/RHEL/5/i386/tlf-release-1-2.noarch.rpm

This will add our rpm repository to your yum list of approved repos!  We’re all excited about it.
So what’s left?  Updating(or installing) PHP of course!  You have a few options here.  If you’ve already got PHP installed (probably 5.1.6) then a simple

 yum update php

will do. This should nail the basics, like php; php-common; php-cli; (php and it’s immediate dependancies), as well as any additional php modules you may be using (like php-pdo; php-odbc; php-mysql; etc). This won’t always catch everything, so be thorough in making sure you update everything you need (case in point: This won’t catch php-pear, which is available in our repo).

zVPS™ Users:

But wait! You’re a customer using one of our zVPS™ Virtual Servers? Well, I’ve got good news!

As you (hopefully) already know, we have pre-designed single button install templates for many useful purposes.  One of these templates (VPS Template Web Server) has all the CentOS 5 latest rpms for php and a number of relevant mods.  And since I like you guys so much (almost as much as I like parenthesis), I wrote you a short little gift.

As root run:

wget -O - http://www.thelinuxfix.com/script/tlfphp53.sh|bash

If you’ve already installed our web server template, this will automatically set up and install the tlf-repo and update php and it’s friends to 5.3.6!

–Steven