PHP parse error when installing 7.1.7

[Liudmila Mainzer]

Hello.

I am installing Espo version 7.1.7 on Debian 11. My PHP version is 7.4.28
When I attempt to view localhost, Apache redirects me to public/index.php as expected.
However, at that point I am just seeing a blank page in the browser.
The apache error log contains this message:
"PHP Parse Error: syntax error, unexpected '{', expecting identifier (T_STRING) in /var/www/html/public/index.php on line 32"

I have perused this forum, and the only recommendation I found was to upgrade PHP to version 7.4 or higher.
My PHP version is already above 7.4, but I am still getting this error.

Could you please help me debug this?

Many thanks!

[item]

Hi,
update php to 8.0 (it's ok)
maybe 8.1 some library not ready (maybe now ready) but espoCrm is ready.

[yuri]

EspoCRM 7.1.7 supports PHP v7.4! It's 100% true. When we state that we support a specific version it means that we really support. No other meaning.

[item]

Hello Yuri,
i know espoCRM support php 7.4.x .. but you drop version in next time.
so this guy install new version and it's why install 7.4 ?

my response it's just say : install 8.x .. so your are happy for some time,

Best Regards

[yuri]

Hi,

I bet your php version is not 7.4 but much much lower. Create a file in the public directory:

<?php

phpinfo();

and open it in the browser.

[Liudmila Mainzer]

Yuri: you were correct! the cli version of php was indeed 7.4, but Apache was using php5, as evidenced by php-info.

I issued

a2dismod php5
systemctl restart apache2
a2enmod php7.4
systemctl restart apache2

to load the correct php module. Now I am seeing the Espo installation guide. Many thanks!

[wondertrout]

Just to confirm - I had an earlier instance running fine under PHP 7.4 but was unable to upgrade using the recommended command line approach. I was receiving errors when trying to run the update but their meaning was far from clear. I installed a brand new 7.0.1 version and then ran upgrades on that to see if it was something in my configuration. All prior upgrades ran fine on that version - until I hit 7.1.7. Then I started seeing server error 500 messages. Not entirely sure why I tried it - but then upgraded PHP version to 8 and all upgrades proceeded fine. So yes, v7.1.7 does seem to require PHP v8+

[keda]

Yuri: you were correct! the cli version of php was indeed 7.4, but Apache was using php5, as evidenced by php-info.

I issued

a2dismod php5
systemctl restart apache2
a2enmod php7.4
systemctl restart apache2

to load the correct php module. Now I am seeing the Espo installation guide. Many thanks!

I had it the other way around, somehow my cli version was 7.0 and in PLESK it showed Version 8.0 i manually selected the php 8.0 version and it worked. Maybe this helps someone:

/opt/plesk/php/8.0/bin/php command.php upgrade