Kevin Bradwick

How to install LibSSH2 on a CentOS 5 system

Libssh2 is a C library implementing the SSH2 protocol for PHP. Here’s how to get it installed on a CentOS system running PHP 5.1.6.

First step is to install some dependencies.

yum install automake php-devel libtool openssl-devel gcc++ gcc

Next, let’s download the latest release of libssh2 (1.2.2 at time of writing), unpack and install

# cd /tmp
# wget http://www.libssh2.org/download/libssh2-1.2.2.tar.gz
# tar -zxf libssh2-1.2.2.tar.gz
# cd libssh2-1.2.2
# ./configure
# make all install
# cd ..
# rm -rf libssh2-1.2.2

Now we need to install the PHP bindings.

# cd /usr/lib/php (for x64 systems use /usr/lib64/php)
# wget http://pecl.php.net/get/ssh2-0.11.0.tgz
# tar -zxf ssh2-0.11.0.tgz
# cd ssh2-0.11.0
# phpize && ./configure –with-ssh2 && make
# cd modules
# mv ssh2.so /usr/lib/php/modules/ssh2.so
# cd /usr/lib/php
# rm -rf ssh2-0.11.0
# rm -f ssh2-0.11.0.tgz

Update the PHP ini file and add the ssh2.so extension like this.

# vi /etc/php.ini
extension_dir = “/usr/lib/php/modules”
extension = ssh2.so

Now restart apache and everything should be installed. You can test it my looking at the out put of # php -m that will list all of the installed modules.