How to install Apache, MySQL, and PHP 5.6 on CentOS 7 (LAMP)

If you find it tiresome like me to install LAMP on CentOS 7 but with PHP 5.6 then this step-by-step guide will walk you through to get up and running within 15 minutes.

Install MySQL

• Update the system first.

sudo yum update

• Download and add the repository then update again. 

wget http://repo.mysql.com/mysql-community-release-el7-5.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh mysql-community-release-el7-5.noarch.rpm
yum update

• Start MySQL

sudo yum install mysql-server
sudo systemctl start mysqld

•  Make MySQL secure

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Install Apache

•  Use the following commands to install and start Apache

sudo yum -y install httpd
sudo systemctl start httpd.service
sudo systemctl enable httpd.service

• Turn on external access of http (Port 80) and https (Port 443)

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Install PHP 5.6

• If you already have EPEL installed then add REMI repo

wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
rpm -Uvh remi-release-7*.rpm

Otherwise

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-5.noarch.rpm
wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
rpm -Uvh remi-release-7*.rpm epel-release-7*.rpm

• Now you need to enable the repo. Go to /etc/yum.repos.d and open remi.repo in text editor (i.e. vi)

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
vi remi.repo

• Find the following sections and set enabled=1 

[remi]
name=Remi's RPM repository for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
#baseurl=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/remi/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/remi/mirror
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-remi

[remi-php56]
name=Remi's PHP 5.6 RPM repository for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
#baseurl=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php56/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php56/mirror
# NOTICE: common dependencies are in "remi-safe"
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-remi

• Finally install the PHP!

sudo yum install php php-gd php-mysql php-mcrypt
sudo service httpd restart

At this point, you should have LAMP installed with PHP 5.6 and it's basic components.