Ubuntu – How to downgrade from PHP 5.4 to 5.3

aptdowngradePHPserver

Recently I upgraded PHP to 5.4, but it seems to be failing on me because APC isn't working with it, however this gave me no choice but to downgrade to 5.3, how can I do this?

I executed apt-get remove php5 and apt-get purge php5 then I removed the 5.4 repo from apt-get then executed apt-get install php5, it says it was installing 5.3, and I restarted php-fastcgi and php5-fpm but when I run php -v it says 5.4.

How can I downgrade from 5.4 to 5.3?

My server is running Ubuntu 11.04.

Best Answer

Downgrading PHP 5.4 to 5.3

In Ubuntu downgrading process is a really mess. Here is the script which you could find it useful (it removes PHP 5.4 and install PHP 5.3):

sudo apt-get remove --purge `dpkg -l | grep php | grep -w 5.4 | awk '{print $2}' | xargs`
sudo apt-get install php5=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-cli=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-common=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 libapache2-mod-php5=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4
sudo apt-get install php5=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-cli=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-common=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 libapache2-mod-php5=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4
sudo apt-get install php-pear=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-curl=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-gd=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-intl=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-mysql=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-pspell=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-recode=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-snmp=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-sqlite=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-tidy=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-xmlrpc=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4 php5-xsl=5.3.10-1ubuntu3.4

Where the available versions you can check by command: apt-cache showpkg php5

After the installation, verify it by command: php --version

Please be careful and don't install any other packages without package version specified (like php5-xcache), otherwise apt-get will replace your PHP instance with 5.4 again!

To prevent this happening, you can hold these packages.

Holding packages using dpkg

To hold packages by dpkg, you can execute the following command:

echo "php5 hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

To hold all PHP packages, run the following command:

dpkg --get-selections | grep ^php5 | sed s/install/hold/g | sudo dpkg --set-selections

The following command will show you holding status of your php packages:

sudo dpkg --get-selections | grep ^php

Holding packages using aptitude

You can also hold packages using aptitude e.g.:

sudo aptitude hold php5

Unhold:

sudo aptitude unhold php5
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