Install php 5.3 or 5.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial and apache

Question

I want to Install php 5.3 or 5.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial and Apache.
A tutorial points me to use PPA but they are not helping me in what I need.

I know that PHP 5.3 and 4 are obsolete but I need this for a project and is this possible? If yes then please teach me how in a step by step procedure with Apache2.

Answer 1

Before installing PHP 5.4 you need to read this notice :

Security support for PHP 5.4 has ended. You are using this repository knowing that there might be and probably are unfixed security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to PHP 5.6 or PHP 7.0 as found in the main repository: ppa:ondrej/php

After understanding the risks , to install PHP 5.4 ,add the PPA to your sources.list :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5-oldstable
sudo apt-get update

Install it:

sudo apt-get install -y php5

To be safe , the PHP 5.6 version can be installed as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php7.0 php5.6 php5.6-mysql php-gettext php5.6-mbstring php-xdebug libapache2-mod-php5.6 libapache2-mod-php7.0
sudo a2dismod php7.0 ; sudo a2enmod php5.6 ; sudo service apache2 restart

Update

All version prior to PHP 5.6 are unsupported

This page lists the end of life date for each unsupported branch of PHP. If you are using these releases, you are strongly urged to upgrade to a current version , as using older versions may expose you to security vulnerabilities and bugs that have been fixed in more recent versions of PHP.

Answer 2

*reference for PHP 5.6 downgrade from PHP 7

Install add-apt-repository

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

Add repository for PHP 5

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php

Update

sudo apt-get update

Install php5-fpm

sudo apt-get install php5.6-fpm

Move files

sudo mv /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php7
sudo mv /usr/bin/php5.6 /usr/bin/php

Check PHP version

php -v

Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Answer 3

you can use this package ppa:sergey-dryabzhinsky/php53 to install php 5.3, i managed with this package on ubuntu 16.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sergey-dryabzhinsky/php53
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php5

Answer 4

While this may not answer your problem, but PHP-5 can be installed on ubuntu 14.04 (I have tried on Amazon EC2)

You can use

sudo apt‐get install php5 libapache2‐mod‐php5 php5‐mcrypt
sudo service apache2 restart

This will install 5.5.9 as on 25-Apr-2017.

Answer 5

Try to use php version switcher: phpbrew .

Supported versions