Ytdyklly

I am using NextCloud in my server and NextCloud informs me that:

You are currently running PHP 7.0.32-0ubuntu0.16.04.1. Upgrade your
PHP version to take advantage of performance and security updates
provided by the PHP Group as soon as your distribution supports it.

So, I tried to upgrade me OS (Ubuntu 16.04), by executing:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-update

Then I restarted the server and I re-executed the above commands. After all these, when I connect from terminal I am getting:

Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-83-generic x86_64)



 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com

 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com

 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage



0 packages can be updated.

0 updates are security updates.

and my PHP version is still PHP 7.0.32-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 (cli) ( NTS ).

This means that PHP 7.0.32 is the latest possible version that I can install in ubuntu 16.04;

The default PHP version for Ubuntu 16.04 is 7.0. If you want to install a new version of PHP on 16.04 you need to use an additional PPA (as it is shown below) or you must compile it on your own.

My server with Ubuntu 16.04 currently uses PHP 7.2 and there are several operational instances of WordPress and MediaWiki. The web server is Apache 2.4. The commands that I've used to migrate from PHP 7.0 to 7.2 are:

# Add the repository 'ppa:ondrej/php'

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

sudo apt update



# Install PHP 7.2

sudo apt install -y php7.2 php7.2-cli libapache2-mod-php7.2

sudo apt install -y php-imagick php-gettext php-memcache php-apcu php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc

sudo apt install -y php-memcached php-mysql php-intl php-mbstring php-curl php-gd

sudo apt install -y php7.2-common php7.2-mysql php7.2-cgi 

sudo apt install -y php7.2-curl php7.2-zip php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-xsl

sudo apt install -y php7.2-dev php7.2-bz2 php7.2-intl php7.2-json php7.2-opcache php7.2-readline 

sudo apt install -y php7.2-imap php7.2-pspell php7.2-recode php7.2-sqlite3 php7.2-tidy #php7.2-mcrypt



# Update the Apache's PHP version

sudo a2dismod php7.0

sudo a2enmod php7.2

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service



# Update the CLI PHP version

sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.2

In the repository ppa:ondrej/php PHP 7.3 is also available, I think to migrate soon to this latest version. Here are the additional tweaks of my /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini that are made according to few WordPress and MediaWiki manuals:

zlib.output_compression = On

max_execution_time = 600

max_input_vars = 3000

memory_limit = 512M

post_max_size = 256M

upload_max_filesize = 128M

allow_url_fopen = Off

pcre.backtrack_limit=1000000

session.cookie_secure = True

session.gc_maxlifetime = 14400

session.cache_expire = 540

mbstring.encoding_translation = On

You can install a newer, manually. But in general, you don't want to do that, because you have to manually download updates and build again.

The point of LTS releases is stability. You know that the PHP version shipped today in 18.04 will be maintained with security updates for five years, without having to upgrade the version - which can lead to problems with programs that depends on current version.

18.04 has PHP 7.2 available. It may be a good upgrade path from 16.04, as both is LTS releases which has a five year support period.

Regarding security, don't rely on the version for this. Ubuntu maintainers and Debian maintainers backport security patches from upstream into supported packages for those five years.