PHP is a popular scripting language that is widely used for web development. It runs as a service on Linux servers, often in conjunction with a web server like Apache or Nginx. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to stop the PHP service in Linux, which can be useful if you need to perform maintenance, updates, or troubleshooting.
Identifying the PHP Service
Before you can stop the PHP service, you need to know the name of the service. PHP can be installed in different ways on Linux, and the service can be named differently. It can be running as a standalone service (PHP-FPM) or as a module within a web server like Apache.
To identify the PHP service, you can use the following command:
ps aux | grep php
This command shows a list of all processes that include “php” in their names or command lines. Look for a process named “php-fpm” or “php5-fpm” (for PHP 5) or “php7.x-fpm” (for PHP 7.x). If you’re using Apache with PHP, look for the “httpd” or “apache2” process.
Stopping the PHP Service
Once you have identified the PHP service, you can stop it using the systemctl or service commands, depending on your Linux distribution and the service management system it uses (systemd or SysVinit).
Stopping PHP-FPM with systemctl (for systemd)
If your system is using systemd, you can stop the PHP-FPM service using the following command (replace “php7.x-fpm” with the actual name of the service you identified earlier):
sudo systemctl stop php7.x-fpm
Stopping PHP-FPM with service (for SysVinit)
If your system is using SysVinit, you can stop the PHP-FPM service using the following command (replace “php7.x-fpm” with the actual name of the service you identified earlier):
sudo service php7.x-fpm stop
Stopping Apache with PHP module
If you’re using Apache with the PHP module, you can stop the entire Apache service to stop PHP processing. Use the following command (replace “httpd” or “apache2” with the actual name of the service you identified earlier):
sudo systemctl stop httpd
Or,
sudo service apache2 stop
Conclusion
In this blog post, we discussed how to stop the PHP service in Linux, whether it’s running as a standalone service like PHP-FPM or as a module within a web server like Apache. Remember to replace the service names in the commands above with the actual names of the services on your system. By stopping the PHP service, you can perform maintenance, updates, or troubleshooting without affecting the running web applications.