How to Upgrade PHP from 5.3.3 to 5.4.10 on CentOS 6.3 via Custom Repositories and Compilation

When running yum update php on CentOS 6.3, you'll notice the system only provides PHP 5.3.3 through official repositories. This is because:

# yum list php --showduplicates Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, security Available Packages php.x86_64 5.3.3-49.el6 base

For production servers, I recommend these approaches:

Method 1: Using Remi Repository (Recommended)

# rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm # yum --enablerepo=remi,remi-php54 install php php-common php-cli

Method 2: Manual Compilation from Source

First install dependencies:

# yum groupinstall "Development Tools" # yum install libxml2-devel gd-devel libpng-devel libjpeg-devel \ curl-devel libxslt-devel

Then compile PHP 5.4.10:

# cd /usr/local/src # wget http://php.net/distributions/php-5.4.10.tar.gz # tar xzf php-5.4.10.tar.gz # cd php-5.4.10 # ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5.4 \ --with-config-file-path=/etc/php5.4 \ --with-mysql --with-mysqli \ --with-zlib --with-gd \ --enable-mbstring # make # make install

After installation, confirm the new version:

Key backward compatibility issues to test:

Magic quotes behavior (removed in 5.4)
Register globals deprecation
Session handling changes

For production environments, always test with:

# php -l /path/to/your/script.php # service httpd configtest


# Checking current system info
cat /etc/redhat-release
# Output: CentOS release 6.3 (Final)

php -v
# Output: PHP 5.3.3

By default, CentOS 6.3's official repositories only provide PHP 5.3.3. This explains why yum update php shows no available updates. The solution requires adding third-party repositories that maintain newer PHP versions.

The Webtatic repository is a reliable source for updated PHP packages on CentOS:


# Import Webtatic's GPG key
rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm

First, remove existing PHP packages to prevent conflicts:


yum remove php*

Then install PHP 5.4 from Webtatic:


yum install php54w php54w-common php54w-cli

After installation completes, verify the new version:


php -v
# Should now show: PHP 5.4.10

You'll likely need to restart your web server:


# For Apache
service httpd restart

# For Nginx (if PHP-FPM is used)
service php-fpm restart
service nginx restart

If you encounter dependency problems, try cleaning the yum cache first:


yum clean all
yum makecache

For applications that might break with PHP 5.4's stricter syntax checking, temporarily set error reporting:


# In php.ini
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT