Upgrade to PHP 7.4

PHP 7.4 is so 2019. Why not update to PHP 8.0 right away?

Check out the PHP 8.0 upgrade guide

Before you start

• This tutorial was developed for and tested with NextCloudPi 1.34.7 on a RaspberryPI.
• NextCloudPi may behave differently on other systems.
• This does not work for NextCloudPi Docker. You can't upgrade PHP in a Docker image.
• Make sure to make a backup of your entire NextCloudPi Instance (config, data, etc.) before you do this.

Enable SSH

If you already have SSH enabled, you can skip this.

• Open the NextCloudPi management ui by opening the NextCloudPi app.
• Find the "SSH" section under "Networking" in the menu on the left
• Make sure it's active and you know the password
• Login to your NextCloudPi with SSH (e.g. ssh pi@<server> on linux)

Add PHP Package Archive

Execute the following commands on your NextCloudPi:

# Become root
sudo su

# Add the PHP PPA from deb.sury.org
apt-get -y install apt-transport-https lsb-release ca-certificates curl
curl -sSL -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
sh -c 'echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list'
apt-get update

Install PHH 7.4

Execute the following command on your NextCloudPi:

apt-get -y install php7.4-fpm php7.4-mysql php7.4-xml php7.4-zip php7.4-mbstring php7.4-gd php7.4-curl php7.4-redis php7.4-intl php7.4-bcmath php7.4-gmp php7.4-imagick imagemagick

Set up Apache for PHP 7.4

Execute the following commands on your NextCloudPi:

# Configure apache for PHP7.4
a2enmod proxy_fcgi setenvif
a2enconf php7.4-fpm

# Disable PHP 7.3 for apache
a2disconf php7.3-fpm

# Symlink NCP PHP configuration
ln -s /etc/php/7.3/fpm/conf.d/90-ncp.ini /etc/php/7.4/fpm/conf.d/90-ncp.ini

# Restart PHP & Apache
systemctl restart php7.4-fpm
systemctl reload apache2

Check the PHP default version

By default, your NextCloudPi should now be using PHP 7.4. You can check this by running php -v. The output should look like this:

root@nextcloudpi:/home/pi# php -v
PHP 7.4.14 (cli) (built: Jan 12 2021 13:59:46) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.4.14, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

If it doesn't, you should use update-alternatives --config php and set PHP 7.4 as default:

root@nextcloudpi:/home/pi# update-alternatives --config php
There are 2 choices for the alternative php (providing /usr/bin/php).

  Selection    Path             Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/php7.4   74        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/php7.3   73        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/php7.4   74        manual mode
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:0

Notes

• It can take a day before app updates show up in the apps store