Update: Easy Apache 4 works now... so unless there's a reason why you would want to stick with EA3, here's how to upgrade:
Easy Apache 4 comes with 2 great features - PHP 7 out of the box and the ability to choose whichever version of PHP you want to run per virtual host.
To install EA4 run the command below as root:
/scripts/migrate_ea3_to_ea4 --run
Before you update, please check your /etc/yum.conf file and make sure it has plugins=1 in it. Otherwise the build will fail.
If anything goes wrong during the upgrade process you can always go back with /scripts/migrate_ea3_to_ea4 --revert --run
After the build has finished (it takes a while), go into WHM and provision this version: "All PHP Options + OpCache"
If you still need to use Easy Apache 3, you can follow along with the tutorial below from 2015.
Hi there,
In this tutorial I want to share my experience with installing PHP7 on one of my WHM/cPanel driven servers on which I had multiple websites that simply couldn't run a version of PHP that is from this century.
I needed to have PHP 7 up and running for some websites and leave the old ones with the old version of PHP (5.3 I think).
Also I needed to do things in such a way that people would stil be able to update anything in cPanel/WHM ... basically make everything completely separate.
For background, you should know that I tested this on CENTOS 6.7 x86_64 kvm – main with WHM 11.52.1 (build 2).
After some research I had a plan in place so I went straight ahead and compiled PHP 7 from source. Here's how:
cd /usr/local/
mkdir php7.0
cd php7.0
wget http://php.net/distributions/php-7.0.1.tar.gz
tar -xvf php-7.0.1.tar.gz
cd php-7.0.1
# don't forget to run ./configure --help to see all available options first
./configure --enable-bcmath --enable-calendar --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-gd-native-ttf --enable-libxml --enable-mbstring --enable-pdo=shared --enable-sockets --enable-zip --prefix=/usr/local/php70 --with-curl=/opt/curlssl/ --with-freetype-dir=/usr --with-gd --with-gettext --with-imap=/opt/php_with_imap_client/ --with-imap-ssl=/usr --with-jpeg-dir=/usr --with-kerberos --with-libdir=lib64 --with-libxml-dir=/opt/xml2/ --with-mcrypt=/opt/libmcrypt/ --with-mysqli --with-openssl=/usr --with-openssl-dir=/usr --with-pcre-regex=/opt/pcre --with-pdo-mysql=shared --with-pdo-sqlite=shared --with-pic --with-png-dir=/usr --with-xpm-dir=/usr --with-zlib --with-zlib-dir=/usr
make
make test
make install
cd /usr/local/php70/bin
./php -v
If everything worked fine for you, running ./php -v in the /usr/local/php70/bin folder should give you something like this:
PHP 7.0.1 (cli) (built: Dec 18 2015 03:53:53) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies
Now let's do some basic configuration on our php.ini file
I only added a few basic extensions here and I relied on the "pre-made" php.ini sample file for production.
cp -f /usr/local/php7.0/php-7.0.1/php.ini-production /usr/local/php70/lib/php.ini
echo "extension=pdo.so" >> /usr/local/php70/lib/php.ini
echo "extension=pdo_mysql.so" >> /usr/local/php70/lib/php.ini
echo "zend_extension=opcache.so" >> /usr/local/php70/lib/php.ini
# if you need more specific configuration just open up the php.ini file end edit it.
At this point you can delete the /usr/local/php7.0 folder (the source code)
Now let's set up Apache
We need to create a configuration file for apache in order to be able to add the php7 handler so, to do that, open up a new file: /usr/local/apache/conf/php7.conf and paste the code below. Don't forget to modify the "Directory" path regex to suit your needs.
vi /usr/local/apache/conf/php7.conf
<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
<Directory ~ "home/user/public_html/">
AddType application/x-httpd-php7 .php
suPHP_AddHandler application/x-httpd-php7
</Directory>
</IfModule>
Now let's set up suPHP (assuming that's what you are running in WHM)
To create a new handler in supPHP ... open up suphp.conf: /opt/suphp/etc/suphp.conf. Then add the new handler using the code below, at the end of the handlers list.
;Handler for php-scripts
#... existing handlers are here ... put yours below them
application/x-httpd-php7="php:/usr/local/php70/bin/php-cgi"
Now let's add our handlers into the EasyApache/cPanel/WHM configuration without breaking anything.
There are two options here. You either go into WHM and edit the post_virtualhost_global.conf file from there or you just run: vi /usr/local/apache/conf/includes/post_virtualhost_global.conf. Add the line below in that file and you should be all done.
Include /usr/local/apache/conf/php7.conf
Now restart Apache and enjoy!
service httpd restart
Update: I noticed people are interested in this, so I also created a screencast while making the changes on one of my servers.
Let me know how this worked for you in the comments section below.
Update: I received a lot of emails/comments from people that had trouble setting this up. So here's a recap:
- In WHM --- do you have suExec and suPHP enabled as the default handler in Easy Apache ?
-
The php7.conf file in /etc/httpd/conf/php7.conf should be kind-of like this:
<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
<Directory ~ "home/something/something/">
AddType application/x-httpd-php7 .php
suPHP_AddHandler application/x-httpd-php7
</Directory>
</IfModule>
a) The ~ is for a Regular Expression so make sure it works.
b) The IfModule only loads the handler if mod_suphp is enabled ... so if it doesn't load it is most likely not enabled. Try removing the IF statement.
-
The /etc/httpd/conf/includes/post_virtualhost_global.conf should have the link to the above as the very last include: Include /usr/local/apache/conf/php7.conf
-
Make sure that /opt/suphp/etc/suphp.conf has this line: application/x-httpd-php7="php:/usr/local/php70/bin/php-cgi"
-
Attention! If you are running Easy Apache 4, suphp.conf is located in /etc/suphp.conf so add your handler there.
-
* If the above doesn't help... I won't be able to help with more instructions unless I actually look at the server.
