Overview

AL2023 includes many PHP modules that are included in PHP Core. AL2023 does not aim to include all of the packages in the PHP Extension Community Library (PECL). You can browse the feature requests at AL2023 GitHub issues page, or you can compile the desired PHP extension.

Note that not all extensions can be compiled on AL2023.

Install PHP

Install PHP

sudo dnf install -y php8.3-*

To get listing of installed PHP extensions

php -m |more

Compile and install PECL extensions

Install development tools

sudo dnf install -y php-devel php-pear gcc
sudo pecl update-channels

Option 1: Compile and install PECL extensions with the pecl command

To compile a extension using the pecl command where extname is name of PECL extension

sudo pecl install extname

This will download the source for extname, compile, and install extname.so into the extension directory at /usr/lib64/php8.3/modules/

Option 2: Compile and install PECL extensions with the phpize command

Sometimes, the pecl command may not work, or that the extension is unavailable as a PECL-compatible package. In this case, you can use phpize

To download source files from PECL

pecl download extname
tar -xf extname-*.tgz
rm -f extname-*.tgz 
cd extname-*

To compile

phpize
./configure
make
sudo make install

For certain extensions, you may need to install additional development libraries. See below for examples.

Load PHP extensions

To load the compiled extension, add extension directive to /etc/php.d directory.

sudo tee /etc/php.d/extname.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=extname.so
EOF

Restart PHP FPM (FastCGI Process Manager)

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm

Restart Apache web server if using mod-php

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Verify PHP extensions

To verify

php -m | grep -i extname

For php-fpm and mod-php, you can use PHP file with phpinfo() in /var/www/html (Apache) or /usr/share/nginx/html (Nginx) folder. For security reasons, delete your PHP file after verification.

Example scripts for common PHP extensions

Below are example scripts to install and load popular extensions for applications such as WordPress. Do install PHP and developments tools first, i.e.

sudo dnf install -y php8.3-*
sudo dnf install -y php-devel php-pear gcc
sudo pecl update-channels

You may have to adjust the configuration parameters

apcu

sudo pecl install --configureoptions 'enable-apcu-debug="no"' apcu
sudo tee /etc/php.d/40-apcu.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=apcu.so
EOF

igbinary

sudo pecl install igbinary
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-igbinary.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=igbinary.so
EOF

imagick

sudo dnf install -y ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel
pecl download Imagick
tar -xf imagick*.tgz
rm -f imagick*.tgz
cd imagick*
phpize
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-imagick.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=imagick.so
EOF

lz4

git clone --recursive --depth=1 https://github.com/kjdev/php-ext-lz4.git
cd php-ext-lz4
phpize
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-lz4.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=lz4.so
EOF

lzf

sudo pecl install --configureoptions 'enable-lzf-better-compression="no"' lzf
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-lzf.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=lzf.so
EOF

msgpack

sudo pecl install msgpack
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-msgpack.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=msgpack.so
EOF

ssh2

sudo dnf install -y libssh2-devel
sudo pecl install --configureoptions 'with-ssh2="yes"' ssh2
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-ssh2.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=ssh2.so
EOF

timezonedb

sudo pecl install timezonedb
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-timezonedb.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=timezonedb.so
EOF

xdebug

sudo pecl install xdebug

Refer to Xdebug documentation for configuration steps

zstd

sudo dnf install -y libzstd-devel
sudo pecl install zstd
sudo tee /etc/php.d/25-zstd.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=zstd.so
EOF

memcached

Ensure that igbinary and msgpack serializer extensions have been compiled and are loaded first. Else specify no for enable-memcached-igbinary and enable-memcached-msgpack

sudo dnf install -y memcached-devel libmemcached-awesome-devel zlib-devel cyrus-sasl-devel libevent-devel
sudo pecl install --configureoptions 'with-libmemcached-dir="yes" with-zlib-dir="yes" with-system-fastlz="no" enable-memcached-igbinary="yes" enable-memcached-msgpack="yes" enable-memcached-json="yes" enable-memcached-protocol="yes" enable-memcached-sasl="yes" enable-memcached-session="yes"' memcached
sudo tee /etc/php.d/40-memcached.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=memcached.so
EOF

redis

Ensure that igbinary, msgpack serializer and lzf, zstd compression extensions have been compiled and are loaded first. Else specify no for enable-redis-igbinary, enable-redis-msgpack, enable-redis-lzf and enable-redis-zstd

sudo dnf install -y redis6-devel lz4-devel libzstd-devel
sudo pecl install --configureoptions 'enable-redis-igbinary="yes" enable-redis-msgpack="yes" enable-redis-lzf="yes" enable-redis-zstd="yes" enable-redis-lz4="yes" with-liblz4="yes"' redis
sudo tee /etc/php.d/40-redis.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=redis.so
EOF

Microsoft Drivers for PHP for Microsoft SQL Server

These drivers rely on Microsoft ODBC driver for SQL Server to handle the low-level communication with SQL Server, which needs to be installed

sudo dnf install php-odbc unixODBC-devel -y
sudo pecl install sqlsrv
sudo tee /etc/php.d/20-sqlsrv.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=sqlsrv.so
EOF

sudo pecl install pdo_sqlsrv
sudo tee /etc/php.d/30-pdo_sqlsrv.ini > /dev/null << EOF
extension=pdo_sqlsrv.so
EOF

Restart php-fpm (sudo systemctl restart php-fpm) or Apache (sudo systemctl restart httpd) depending on your configuration.

CloudFormation template

To get an AL2023 EC2 instance with PHP extensions up and running for testing, you can try the CloudFormation template at aws-samples/ec2-lamp-server - Github