PHP

Endless Lifecycle Support (ELS) for PHP from TuxCare provides security fixes for PHP versions that have reached their end-of-life. This allows you to continue running your server vulnerability-free.

About ALT-PHP

alt-php is a component provided by TuxCare designed for managing PHP versions on web servers and enabling users to choose PHP versions for their websites.

Here are the key features and characteristics of alt-php:

Multiple PHP Versions - alt-php allows the installation and usage of various PHP versions on a single web server. This enables users to select the PHP version that best suits their web applications.
User Segmentation - alt-php allows hosting providers and web server administrators to provide different PHP versions for different users. Each user can choose the PHP version that suits their website.
Enhanced Compatibility - alt-php is designed to ensure maximum compatibility with various web applications and frameworks. This includes optimizations and changes to make it compatible with a wide range of PHP applications.
Updates and Support - CloudLinux provides regular updates for alt-php, including bug fixes, performance improvements, and updates for new PHP versions. This helps ensure the security and currency of PHP usage.
Management Tools - alt-php usually comes with a set of management tools, such as PHP Selector, allowing users to manage PHP versions and enable/disable various PHP extensions.

alt-php provides a more flexible and convenient environment for working with different PHP versions on a single server, which is particularly useful in a web hosting environment where multiple users have varying requirements for PHP versions for their web applications.

Supported OS and PHP versions

OS	Package Type	OS Version	PHP versions
EL 6 (CentOS, CloudLinux, Oracle Linux, etc.)	RPM	6.x	5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3
EL 7 (Amazon Linux 2, CentOS, CloudLinux, Oracle Linux, etc.)	RPM	7.x	5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
EL 8 (AlmaLinux, CentOS, CentOS Stream, CloudLinux, Oracle Linux, etc.)	RPM	8.x	5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
EL 9 (AlmaLinux, CentOS, CloudLinux, Oracle Linux, etc.)	RPM	9.x	5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
EL 10 (AlmaLinux, CloudLinux, Oracle Linux, etc.)	RPM	10.x	5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Ubuntu	DEB	16.04	5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3
Ubuntu	DEB	18.04, 20.04	5.2, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Ubuntu	DEB	22.04, 24.04	5.2, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Ubuntu	DEB	26.04	5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Debian	DEB	10	5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Debian	DEB	11, 12	5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Debian	DEB	13	5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Alpine Linux	APK	3.23, 3.24	7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1
Windows	-	Windows Server 2019, 2022, 2025	5.2, 5.4, 5.6, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2

Supported architectures:

x86_64 — all supported Linux OSes
aarch64/arm64 — Debian 12 and 13, Alpine Linux 3.23 and later
Windows — x64 (64-bit) and x86 (32-bit) builds

Other versions and architectures available upon request. Contact [email protected] for more information.

Installation on Linux

Prerequisites

A valid TuxCare ELS license key — contact [email protected] to obtain one
Root or sudo access to the server
Amazon Linux 2-specific. Before installing alt-php, make sure libvpx is installed. Amazon Linux 2 provides two versions of libvpx: 1.9 (the default) and 1.3. alt-php requires 1.3 for compatibility with EL 7 systems like CentOS 7:
```
sudo yum install libvpx-1.3.0
```

Download the installer script

wget https://repo.alt.tuxcare.com/alt-php-els/install-els-alt-php-rpm-repo.sh

Run the installer script with your license key (see Prerequisites above)
The script registers the server with CLN, adds the PGP key and repository.
```
sh install-els-alt-php-rpm-repo.sh --license-key XXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
```
Imunify customers
If Imunify360 is installed on the server and has a valid license, you can install alt-php (HardenedPHP) without a separate ELS license key. Run the installer with the -i (--imunify) option instead of --license-key — your Imunify access credentials are used automatically for repository access:
```
sh install-els-alt-php-rpm-repo.sh --imunify
```
Install a PHP version
Each version can be installed individually or all versions at once.
```
yum groupinstall alt-php73
```
To install all versions at the same time:
```
yum groupinstall alt-php
```
Verify the installation
Check that the desired PHP version is installed:
```
rpm -qa | grep alt-php
```

Useful Commands and Usage

When you deploy an updated version of PHP through PHP ELS, using your system's regular update tool (yum, dnf, apt), the new version will be installed under /opt/alt/php[version]/. This means that all modules, configurations and additional files pertaining to this version will be contained inside that path. Different versions of PHP will each have their own path and can coexist without issues on the same system. Below you will find the location of all the relevant files, should you want to make any changes.

To check whether the package is installed and see its current version, use the following command based on your OS:

sudo yum list installed | grep php

Installation on Windows

TuxCare provides two ways to install ELS PHP on Windows: using the TuxCare Installer (recommended) — a graphical tool that automates the process, or manually by downloading and configuring PHP from the repository.

Prerequisites

A valid TuxCare ELS license key — contact [email protected] to obtain one
Administrator access to the Windows system

Customers who previously received an authentication token can continue to use it: select Use previous token in the TuxCare Installer, or use the tokenized URL for manual installation.

Choose installation method:

TuxCare Installer allows you to install and manage ELS PHP versions through a graphical interface on Windows Server 2019, 2022, and 2025.

Download the installer and launch it
Download the installer from the following link:
```
https://windows.tuxcare.com/php/TuxCare.Installer.exe
```
Run the downloaded file. After the first run, the installer appears under Settings > Apps.
Select Register
Click Register.
If you previously registered on this machine with an authentication token and saved it, you can click Use previous token instead.
Register with your license key
- Click I have a license key.
- Enter your license key to complete the registration.
Select a PHP version
Tick the checkbox next to the version you want. Only 1 version can be installed per installation.
If you already have a version installed, it will appear highlighted in green. When another version is selected, the installer will ask whether to replace the existing one or install it alongside.
Choose installation path and load modules
- By default, the installer uses C:\Program Files.
- Click Change to install to a different location.
- Click Load to fetch the required PHP archive.
- Select the modules you need and click Continue.

Verify the installation

Open Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Terminal and run:

php -v

You should see output like:

PHP 5.6.40 (cli) (built: May 30 2025 15:43:43)
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies

During installation, the installer creates a folder with PHP configuration and selected modules, and adds TuxCare PHP to the System PATH.

How to find System PATH

Right-click This PC and select Properties, or search for Settings > System > About in the Start menu.
Click Advanced system settings.
Click on Environment Variables.
Under System variables, find Path and click Edit.
You will see your PHP C:\PHP directory added.

Additional configurations

Depending on your ELS PHP usage purpose, additional configurations may be required. You can integrate PHP with other tools, for example, IIS or WordPress. For further details, refer to the official PHP documentation.

Change default PHP version

If you have multiple PHP versions installed and want to change the default, update your System Path environment variable. Open Settings > System > About → Advanced system settings → Environment Variables. Under System variables, find Path and click Edit. Move the desired PHP version's path to the top, and remove or move down other PHP paths. Click OK, restart your terminal, and verify with php -v.

Extensions

Extensions are managed through the php.ini file located in your PHP installation directory (e.g. C:\PHP). Open it in a text editor and find the extensions section. Remove the semicolon ; at the beginning of a line to enable an extension, or add ; to disable it.

;extension=curl
extension=gd2
;extension=mbstring
extension=mysqli
extension=pdo_mysql

Increase upload/memory limits

If you're integrating PHP with applications like WordPress, you might need to increase memory and upload size limits. Open the php.ini file and set the values as needed:

upload_max_filesize=40M
post_max_size=40M
memory_limit=256M

Uninstallation

To uninstall a PHP version manually, delete the PHP installation directory (e.g. C:\PHP) and remove the corresponding path from System Path.

To uninstall via TuxCare Installer, open Settings > Apps, find TuxCare Installer and click Uninstall.

SaxonC Use Case

You can extend alt-php with additional modules. Below is an example of installing the SaxonC PHP extension.

Although this guide uses alt-php82 in its examples, the same installation steps apply to alt-php83 and newer versions. Replace php82 with your target version in all commands and file paths.

This guide also uses SaxonC-HE as an example. Be sure to adjust file names and paths to match the version you downloaded.

Prerequisites

Saxon 12+ (required for PHP 8.2+ compatibility) — download from saxonica.com
httpd (or apache2), gcc-c++ (or g++) with minimum C++14 support
alt-php82-devel (or matching version)

Edition	License	Key Features
SaxonC-HE	Open Source	XSLT 3.0, XPath 3.1, XQuery 3.1 (Basic)
SaxonC-PE	Commercial	HE + ICU localization, JSON support
SaxonC-EE	Commercial	PE + Schema validation, Optimization

Set up SaxonC

Download SaxonC
Download from the official Saxonica download page. Create a working directory and move the downloaded zip file into it:
```
mkdir saxon && cd saxon
mv ../SaxonCHE-linux-x86_64-12-9-0.zip .
```

Extract the archive

Unzip the downloaded file and verify:

unzip SaxonCHE-linux-x86_64-12-9-0.zip
ls

Example output:

SaxonCHE-linux-x86_64-12-9-0  SaxonCHE-linux-x86_64-12-9-0.zip

Install the libraries
Starting with version 12.6, /opt/saxonica/ is the recommended installation path. Navigate into the extracted directory and copy all Saxon files:
```
cd SaxonCHE-linux-x86_64-12-9-0
sudo mkdir -p /opt/saxonica/
sudo cp -r SaxonCHE/* /opt/saxonica/
```
The installed structure should contain bin, include, and lib directories.
Configure environment variables
Add the following lines to your .bashrc or /etc/profile.d/saxon.sh.
The LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable must point to the Saxon libraries:
```
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/saxonica/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
```
To run the Transform, Query, and Validate (EE only) binaries, set the PATH variable:
```
export PATH="/opt/saxonica/bin:$PATH"
```
If the PHP web server can't find the Saxon libraries, you may also need to add /opt/saxonica/lib to a new file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ and run ldconfig.

Build the PHP extension

Install alt-php82-devel
Install the development package required for compiling PHP extensions:
```
dnf install alt-php82-devel
```
Verify that phpize is available:
```
ls /opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/phpize
```

Prepare the build environment

Navigate to the PHP extension source directory within the extracted Saxon archive and run phpize to prepare the build:

cd php/src/
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/phpize

Example output:

Configuring for:
PHP Api Version:         20220829
Zend Module Api No:      20220829
Zend Extension Api No:   420220829

Configure and compile

Configure the extension build with Saxon support and link to the Saxon libraries:

./configure --with-saxon --with-php-config=/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php-config LDFLAGS="-L/opt/saxonica/lib"

Compile and install:

make
sudo make install

Example output:

Installing shared extensions:     /opt/alt/php82/usr/lib64/php/modules/

Enable the extension

Create a configuration file that tells PHP to load the extension:

tee -a /opt/alt/php82/etc/php.d/20-saxon.ini <<EOF
; configuration for php Saxon HE/PE/EE module
extension=saxon.so
EOF

Verify that the Saxon extension appears in the list of loaded modules:

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php -m | grep saxon

Example output:

saxonc

Verify with a test script

Run a quick test to confirm the extension works:

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php -ddisplay_errors=E_ALL  << 'EOF'
<?php
  $saxonProc = new Saxon\SaxonProcessor();
  $transformer = $saxonProc->newXslt30Processor();
  $executable = $transformer->compileFromString("
    <xsl:stylesheet version='2.0' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'>
        <xsl:template name='go'><a/></xsl:template>
    </xsl:stylesheet>
");
  $root = $executable->callTemplateReturningValue("go");
  $node = $root->getHead()->getNodeValue();
  echo "$node \n";
EOF

Example output:

<a/>

If you are using php-fpm or Apache, restart the services.

PHP extensions list

PHP extensions are modules that extend the functionality of the PHP programming language. These extensions provide additional capabilities for working with various types of data, performing specific tasks, interacting with external resources and supporting various protocols.

The PHP core includes many built-in extensions that provide basic functionality, such as working with databases, string processing, working with images, and others. However, to support more specific tasks and third-party libraries, you can use additional PHP extensions.


Reflection SPL SimpleXML apc apm ares bcmath bcompiler big_int bitset bloomy bz2 bz2_filter calendar coin_acceptor crack ctype curl date dba dbase dbx dom doublemetaphone eaccelerator enchant exif ffmpeg*	fileinfo filter ftp gd gender geoip geos gettext gmagick gmp gnupg haru hash hidef htscanner http huffman iconv idn igbinary imagick imap inclued inotify interbase intl ioncube_loader	json ldap libxml lzf mailparse mbstring mcrypt memcache memcached mhash mongo msgpack mssql mysql mysqli ncurses oauth odbc opcache openssl pcntl pcre pdf pdo pdo_dblib pdo_firebird	pdo_mysql pdo_oci* pdo_odbc pdo_pgsql pdo_sqlite pgsql phar posix pspell quickhash radius rar readline recode redis rsync session shmop snmp soap sockets sourceguardian spl_types sqlite ssh2 standard stats stem	stomp suhosin sybase_ct sysvmsg sysvsem sysvshm tidy timezonedb tokenizer translit uploadprogress uuid wddx xcache xcache_3 xdebug xhprof xml xmlreader xmlrpc xmlwriter xrange xsl yaf yaz zend_optimizer zip zlib

^* CentOS 7, CloudLinux 7, etc.

What's Next?

CVE Tracker — Track vulnerability fixes and updates
Available fixes — Patched versions and changelogs
Supported components — Full list of product parts covered by ELS
Machine-readable security data — Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL), Common Security Advisory Framework (CSAF), Errata, and RSS feeds for PHP ELS
PHP Changelog — latest updates, fixes, and enhancements for ALT-PHP

Edit this page

Scroll up

# PHP

# About ALT-PHP

# Supported OS and PHP versions

# Installation on Linux

Prerequisites

# Useful Commands and Usage

# Installation on Windows

Prerequisites

# Additional configurations

# Change default PHP version

# Extensions

# Increase upload/memory limits

# Uninstallation

# SaxonC Use Case

Prerequisites

# Set up SaxonC

# Build the PHP extension

# PHP extensions list

# What's Next?

PHP

About ALT-PHP

Supported OS and PHP versions

Installation on Linux

Useful Commands and Usage

Installation on Windows

Additional configurations

Change default PHP version

Extensions

Increase upload/memory limits

Uninstallation

SaxonC Use Case

Set up SaxonC

Build the PHP extension

PHP extensions list

What's Next?