How to get latest PHP and MySQL on VPS server.

Recently I have used a cheep VPS service in Japan. Many of them offer bare bone Linux distribution with minimum software. That is fine, but I got considerably old version of software when I installed PHP or MySQL with yum command. It is not only usefulness but also including vulnerability of whole system.One solution is building from source code and another is using third party repository to install them.

"Les RPM de Remi" is a famous repository for PHP community. If you want to get newest version of PHP and MySQL, you can get them easily by using this repository. Here is the procedure of adding Remi repository to your system (CentOS 6, Other systems are instructed in Remi's site).

# wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
# wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
# rpm -Uvh remi-release-6*.rpm epel-release-6*.rpm

Then, you can see a version of software that would be installed using info command and install them using install command.

# yum --enablerepo=remi info php

# yum --enablerepo=remi install php php-devel php-mbstring

If you want to install father new version, you can try remi-test repository.

# yum --enablerepo=remi-test info php

# yum --enablerepo=remi-test install php php-devel php-mbstring

As of November 19, we can get PHP5.3.18 and PHP5.4.8 with remi and remi-test respectively. But Remi just announced that remi will change the supporting version of software on December 15.
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I've decided to stop support of PHP 5.3 in remi repository. So, this is PHP 5.4 (currently in remi-test) which will go in remi.In the remi-test repository, which will get back its role, I will soon propose:
PHP 5.5.0 (alpha should be published really soon)
MySQL 5.6 (version 5.6.8 is a RC).
Planed switch date : december 15th.

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So if you need to use Remi repository next month, take care of their versions.