Can I install apache with PHP 5.3.29 on Ubuntu Server 20.04?

Question

Is there any way to install php version 5.3 that will work with apache? I realy need to run an old application that only uses this version.

I already installed php according to this instruction but apache does not see it:

cd /tmp && wget http://in1.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.29.tar.bz2
tar -xvf php-5.3.29.tar.bz2
cd php-5.3.29
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall

Answer 1

First and foremost, I would recommend in the strongest terms against running PHP 5.3 for anything public facing. It's ten years old, hasn't been supported in seven, and has well known, highly publicized major security flaws ☠️.

You will be hacked within days, if not hours.

As for your setup, I strongly suspect you're not going to find version of libapache2-mod-php compatible with both modern Apache and PHP 5.3 - you're going to have a bad time. You can probably dig up and manually compile an old version of Apache.

If you absolutely must , you can use a pre-built setup with Docker. You'll get a smidgen more safety from containerizing your application, but note you can and should never depend on containers for security purposes. Breakouts are extremely common.

docker pull php:5.3-apache