How to Install Multiple PHP Version with Apache on Ubuntu

    RahulBy 4 Mins ReadUpdated:

    Generally, the host manager used a separate server for each PHP version application deployment. Which increases the hosting cost. Some of the host managers are using Docker to run multiple PHP versions on a single server. Also, most of you are aware of the configuration, I used in this tutorial. But some of the system administrators are not aware of this. This tutorial will help you to install multiple PHP version with Apache on Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and 18.04 LTS systems without switching PHP versions.

    This tutorial describes the installation and configuration of two VirtualHost on Apache with separate PHP versions. First VirtualHost will work with PHP 8.1 and another VirtualHost will run with PHP 7.4. So just go through this tutorial. You can also use more than two PHP versions with Apache as required but this tutorial covers two only.

    Installing Apache2

    Install Apache web server from the official repository. Launch terminal on your system or login with ssh for remote systems. Execute the following commands to install the latest available version of the Apache webserver.

    sudo apt update 
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid

    Now enable a few modules required for the configuration of multiple PHP versions with Apache. These modules are necessary to integrate PHP FPM and FastCGI with the Apache server.

    sudo a2enmod actions fcgid alias proxy_fcgi

    Installing PHP Versions

    For the installation of PHP versions, we use the PPA maintained here. Use the below couple of commands to add the PPA to your system.

    sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

    For this tutorial, we are using PHP 8.1 and PHP 7.4 to configure with the Apache webserver. To use the multiple PHP versions, we will use PHP FPM and FastCGI. Let’s install the following packages on your system.

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install php8.1 php8.1-fpm
sudo apt install php7.4 php7.4-fpm

    After installation, php-fpm services will be started automatically. Use the following commands to make sure both services are running.

    sudo systemctl status php8.1-fpm
sudo systemctl status php7.4-fpm

    Configuring Apache Virtual Hosts

    Get ready for the configuration of websites on your Apache server. For the testing purpose, I am configuring two websites to work with two different-2 PHP versions. First, create two directories on your server.

    sudo mkdir /var/www/php81
sudo mkdir /var/www/php74

    Create an index.php file containing the phpinfo() function.

    echo "" | sudo tee -a /var/www/php81/index.php
echo "" | sudo tee -a /var/www/php74/index.php

    Let’s start the creation of VirtualHost. Apache keeps all the VirtualHost configuration files under /etc/apache2/sites-available with the extension .conf. Create a file for the first virtual host and edit in your favorite text editor.

    sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/php81.example.com.conf

    Add the following content. Make sure to use the correct ServerName and directory path according to your setup. This website is configured to work with PHP 8.1.

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    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName php81.example.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/php81
        <Directory /var/www/php81>
            Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
        </Directory>
        <FilesMatch \.php$>
            # Apache 2.4.10+ can proxy to unix socket
            SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost"
        </FilesMatch>
    </VirtualHost>

    Similarly, create a second VirtualHost configuration file to work with PHP 7.4. Edit configuration file in text editor:

    sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/php74.example.com.conf

    Add the following content to file with proper ServerName and DocumentRoot.

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    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName php74.example.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/php74
        <Directory /var/www/php74>
            Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
        </Directory>
        <FilesMatch \.php$>
            SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost"
        </FilesMatch>
    </VirtualHost>

    Both of the websites are configured now. But they are still not active. Apache keeps active sites under /etc/apache2/sites-enabled directory. You can simply create a symbolic link of config files to this directory or use the below command to do the same.

    sudo a2ensite php81.example.com
sudo a2ensite php74.example.com

    After making all the changes restart Apache to reload new settings changes.

    sudo systemctl restart apache2

    Your setup has been completed now. Go to the next step to test your setup.

    Test Setup

    Edit /etc/hosts file on your local system and make an entry like below. This will resolve temprory names to localhost IP address.

    sudo vim /etc/hosts

    Add following entry to end of file

    127.0.0.1     php81.example.com
127.0.0.1     php74.example.com

    Open a web browser and visit both of the sites. You will see that php81.example.com shows the version PHP 8.1 and php74.example.com is showing the PHP 7.4 as the configuration.

    • http://php81.example.com
      Configure Multiple PHP Version with Apache on Ubuntu
      PHP 8.1 with Apache
    • http://php74.example.com
      Configure Multiple PHP Version with Apache on Ubuntu
      PHP 7.4 with Apache

    Conclusion

    This tutorial helped you to install and configure multiple PHP versions with Apache on the Ubuntu Linux system. That provides you with a cost-effective solution to deploy different PHP version applications on a single web server.

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    47 Comments

    2. Josef on

      This was a really nice tutorial, thanks.

      You should also add how to undoing changes. On my case, I only needed an older php version to upgrade an old application that didn’t supported the latest official php version from Ubuntu. So, I upgraded, then afterwards, I didn’t need the old php version. I just went for the easy way:

      1. Check if your application works with the installed version from Ubuntu, for this, remove the FilesMatch directive from apache, restart it and access your website.
      You may also create a index2.php file as follows:
      echo “” > /var/www/your_document_root/index.php
      Then check that you are running the official Ubuntu version.

      2. Then you can proceed to remove the ondrej/php repositories. There are several ways of doing this; however, I took the easy way, which was to use the “ppa-purge” tool:
      sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
      sudo ppa-purge ppa:ondrej/php

      3. Look for the repository key:
      sudo apt-key list

      search: ondrej/php

      4. Optional: you may delete that key by running:
      sudo apt-key del “long_40_char_hex_here”

      5. Check if the key was removed:
      apt-key list | grep ondrej

      6. Restart apache and check that your site is using the php version from Ubuntu by showing: index2.php in the browser

      7. Delete index2.php

      That’s all I did and it worked.

      Thanks again for the tutorial

      Best regards
      Josef

      Reply
      • Josef on

        I don’t know why, but some of my code was removed. And I also realized that something was wrong:
        echo “… php phpinfo(); … ” > /var/www/your_document_root/index2.php

        Replace it by the code from this post. By the way, My mistake on the previous command: I was overriding index.php, but that wasn’t what I wanted; it may break the php application, so, a better way is to create a second file: index2.php

        Reply
    3. RYANB on

      THanks for the tutorial, it works on me (Ubuntu 20.04).

      but when i type php –version in terminal , it show that php 7.4 is active, did you know how to switch this to 5.4 ? thanks.

      Reply
    6. Mathieu CABARET on

      For Ubuntu 18.04 users, first part of PHP installation should be :
      sudo apt install software-properties-common
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

      rather than :
      sudo apt install python-software-properties
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

      Reply
      • Rahul on

        Hi Yv,

        Make sure the socket path in Apache “/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock” is set to the correct version you have installed.

        Reply
    9. Sebastian Czerniak on

      There is an mistake in virtualhost file in line below:

      SetHandler “proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php5.6-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/”

      Should be with no slash after localhost:

      SetHandler “proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php5.6-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost”

      Otherwise $_SERVER[‘SCRIPT_FILENAME’] will be set with leading two slashes.

      Reply
    12. David Hay on

      Thanks man, been struggling with a nice automated setup for my dev environment, now having php version in conf is so clean! I tried a few different methods, but this one worked first time. Thanks again, Dave.

      Reply
    15. Ryan on

      I’ve followed these instructions before on one server and it worked but now I’m trying on a different server and the php for version 7.2 is being rendered in the browser. Any idea why that would be happening?

      Reply
    16. treminaor on

      This worked perfectly on my Ubuntu 16.04 server. If you want to control your PHP version on a per-directory basis instead of using VirtualHosts you can add this to an .htaccess file in a directory you want to specify a non-default PHP version:

      # Apache 2.4.10+ can proxy to unix socket
      SetHandler “proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php5.6-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/”

      I needed php5.6 in my example but you need to change the version number to what you installed.

      Reply
    17. Ejoo on

      I was looking for this and finally found it here! Thanks a lot, saved my day (night to be exact 😉 ). I did it just the same way with v7.1 and v7.3, works fine
      For Hersdyanata: I missed the line with “sudo a2enmod actions fcgid alias proxy_fcgi” and had just white pages (module proxy_fcgi was not activated).

      Reply
    20. Andrew on

      Thank you. This worked great for me. I had done the version where you install tasksel and then lamp-server and it came with Apache 2.0 handlers which I did not want, plus I wanted 2 versions. I removed all the PHP packages (using Webmin) and then was able to follow this guide and it worked great on 18.04!

      Reply
    24. Hafiz Umer on

      Sir you miss just 1 step.

      sudo nano /etc/hosts/

      then hosts file is open on Command line just add

      127.0.0.1 php72.example.com
      127.0.0.1 php56.example.com

      Reply
    26. Sebas on

      Thanks for the tuto, but I still have issue. I received Server not Found error when I run it.

      And when running this line : “sudo a2enmod actions fastcgi alias proxy_fcgi”, fastcgi didn’t work.

      Reply
      • José Ayram on

        Hello!

        I have the same issue with “sudo a2enmod actions fastcgi alias proxy_fcgi” in Ubuntu 18.04.

        I got this error: ERROR: Module fastcgi does not exist!

        Reply
        • Rahul K. on

          Hi Jose & Sebas,

          There is little update with Ubuntu 18.04. This article is also updated accordingly.

          Install Package:

          $ sudo apt install libapache2-mod-fcgid

          Enable Module:

          $ sudo a2enmod fcgid

          Reply
    27. John on

      Simple and great post! Thank you for it!

      One note, the `libapache2-mod-fastcgi` package you have listed is named `libapache2-mod-fcgid` in more recent repos.

      Thanks again!

      Reply
    29. Mathieu on

      Thanks for this tutorial
      How does it work for a
      I try and it does not work
      It does not take into account the chosen php

      Thank you

      Reply
    30. Audrey on

      can we set what php using on .htaccess like cPanel did?

      maybe if branch or function?

      SetHandler “proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php{ReadFormHandler}-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/”

      Reply
    33. Ela on

      What this line used for?

      SetHandler “proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php5.6-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/”

      Normally I noticed apache vs mod_php and nginx vs php fpm packages

      Reply
    34. Jos on

      Quickly ran into this error:

      Package libapache2-mod-fastcgi is not available, but is referred to by another package.
      This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
      is only available from another source

      E: Package ‘libapache2-mod-fastcgi’ has no installation candidate

      I’ve tried several online solutions for getting the lib after adding a lot of repo’s, but error remains.
      Any ideas?

      Reply
      • Dan on

        try searching:
        $ apt-cache search fastcgi | grep apache2
        apache2-utils – Apache HTTP Server (utility programs for web servers)
        libapache2-mod-fcgid – FastCGI interface module for Apache 2
        …

        so, apt-get install libapache2-mod-fcgid

        Reply

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