Ubuntu Update PHP Version to 7.4 not recognized in php -v

Question

Base System: Ubuntu16.4; Bundled with a bitnami Wordpress installation

Goal:

Properly install PHP7.4

Status

Behaviour of the system after apt-get install php7.4:

• find / -name php7* => all Files I find are 7.4-related (their name includes php7.4)

• sudo a2enmod php7* => reports errors for any version except for php7.4

• sudo /usr/bin/php7.4 -v => PHP 7.0.30 (cli) (built: May 11 2018 16:56:24) ( ...

BUT

• php -v => PHP 7.0.30 (cli) (built: May 11 2018 16:56:24)...

• Wordpress-Plugin to display version => Running PHP version: 7.0.30

How is this even possible? O_o

Answer 1

Bitnami Engineer here,

We do not provide WordPress deployments with PHP 7.4 but you can follow these steps to achieve it:

• Launch a new instance in LightSail with LAMP 7.3 (do not worry, we will remove its content and install LAMP 7.4). Please note that you will install a Bitnami stack so the 512MB or 1GB of RAM instance types will probably have problems during the installation.
• Install LAMP 7.4 in your instance (this will remove the LAMP 7.3 data as well)

cd /tmp
sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop
sudo rm -rf /opt/bitnami
wget "https://downloads.bitnami.com/files/stacks/lampstack/7.4.7-0/bitnami-lampstack-7.4.7-0-linux-x64-installer.run
chmod +x ./bitnami-lampstack-7.4.7-0-linux-x64-installer.run
sudo ./bitnami-lampstack-7.4.7-0-linux-x64-installer.run --prefix /opt/bitnami

• Deploy WordPress following the steps explained in this other Stack Overflow post
• and then migrate the data from one installation to the other one using the All in One WordPress Migration plugin.

Once you confirm everything works as expected, you can stop your previous instance of WordPress.

Happy to help!