Do you urgently need a VestaCP PHP update to version 7.3?
Recently, who uses WordPress you will have noticed this notice on the Noticeboard:
This article is aimed at those who use the control panel for website hosting VestaCP (Vesta Control Panel), which basically runs PHP 5.3, on the server CentOS.
I will show how to update the outdated version of PHP, from version 5 to version 7.3, to make WordPress more secure.
Before we proceed, it's good create an image of the server's hard disk, so you can perform complete and fast recovery in case of errors.
Checking the current PHP version of VestaCP
Let's first check which version of PHP is installed on our server, with the command:
php -v
The version will definitely be obsolete.
Update PHP of VestaCP
At this point we can type the sequence of commands that will allow us to update VestaCP's PHP to version 7.3.
Let's first install the EPEL package:
yum install epel-release -y
The -y final is used to directly confirm installation of the package, without further requests. It is possible that the package is already installed.
We use the Remi repository to update the PHP package:
wget http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-7.rpm
The command rpm -Uvh contains the option inside verbose, that is, verbose. Let's not be scared when we see a series of less than reassuring indications!
Let's activate PHP 7.3 via the Remi repository:
yum-config-manager --enable remi-php73
Just in case an error of this type occurs: "-bash: yum-config-manager: command not found", you will need to install the package yum-utils, via this command:
yum install yum-utils -y
Then run again yum-config-manager of the previous point.
Well, at this point we have the possibility to launch the update with the command:
yum update -y
The command yum update -y will update not only PHP, but also any other outdated packages on the server. For this reason the execution could take a few minutes.
If you want to check the packages to be updated, before confirming, you can use the command without the option -y:
yum update
Once the update is complete, you will be able to check the updated PHP version with:
php -v
It is possible to consult the list of installed PHP packages with the following command:
yum list installed |grep "php"
Un bel riavvio del server al termine dell’aggiornamento PHP di VestaCP alla versione 7.3 non potrà fare che bene! Infatti, l'avviso di WordPress "Aggiornamento PHP obbligatorio" sparirà dopo il riavvio del server.
reboot