Upgrade PHP 5.5 to 7.0 on Ubuntu 14.04

PHP 7.0 just released 2 weeks ago, and it has good reviews about performance improved a lot. So I would like to give it a try, upgrading my Ubuntu 14.04 VPS on DigitalOcean to this latest PHP version.  Here is my upgrade snippet.

My VPS details before upgrade:

• Ubuntu 14.04
• PHP 5.5.9
• nginx 1.4.6
• phpmyadmin installed

Steps

1. Add the repository

   add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php-7.0

2. Update

   apt-get update

3. You can check installed php5-* packages with this command, for better understanding before remove them.

   dpkg --get-selections | grep php

4. Remove all php5-* packages

   apt-get purge php5-*
   apt-get --purge autoremove

5. Install php7.0 packages. Some might not necessary, depends on your requirement.

   apt-get install php7.0-fpm php7.0-mysql php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-json php7.0-opcache

6. After everything installed properly, you will need to update your web server configuration. For me, I need to modify fastcgi_pass directive in Nginx config file to something like this:

   fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
   

   This is because the location of socket file has changed in php7.

7. Restart your nginx and php7.0-fpm

   service nginx restart
   service php7.0-fpm restart

Notes:

• Run all commands with sudo or your root account.
• phpMyAdmin will be removed during the steps above. Because it requires some php5 packages.