How to install “Secure Shell2 (SSH2)” PHP Extension

How To
May 28, 2012

After much adoption of the SSH2 extension, the installation process has gotten a lot more simple, check it out:

yum install libssh2-devel
pecl install ssh2-beta
echo extension=ssh2.so >> /etc/php.ini

Now, you can restart your web server, and check a phpinfo page to verify the installation!

Installing the libssh2 and Secure Shell2 libraries is a real pain , but I have to do it time to time, when I’m setting up new environments for the software I work on.
Before we begin, please note this is on a CentOS machine with the yum package manager install.
Note: Before you begin, make sure you have all the proper developer packages installed.

yum install gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake (c compiler)
yum install php-devel (phpize)

Installing OpenSSL on CentOS 5.2
Run the following two yum commands to install OpenSSL & it’s developer’s package. (libssh2 has dependencies on the OpenSSL developer package)

yum install openssl
yum install openssl-devel

Installing libssh2 libraries on CentOS 5.2
Enter the following commands to download and install the latest libssh2 package.

wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/libssh2/libssh2-0.18.tar.gz
gunzip libssh2-0.18.tar.gz
tar -xvf libssh2-0.18.tar.gz
cd libssh2-0.18.tar.gz
./configure && make all install

Compiling libssh2 PHP Extension
Use these commands to download and compile the libssh2 PHP module.

wget http://pecl.php.net/get/ssh2-0.10.tgz
gunzip ssh2-0.10.tgz
tar -xvf ssh2-0.10.tgz
cd ssh2-0.10.tgz
phpize && ./configure –with-ssh2 && make « Generates ssh2.so, the compiled PHP extension.

(Note: If you encounter a make: *** [ssh2.lo] Error 1 error, run Bill Pitz’s libssh2 patch.)

cp ./modules/ssh2.so /usr/lib/php/modules/ssh2.so

Open your PHP configuration file by typing vi /etc/php.ini and add extension=ssh2.so to the configuration, and save the file when you are complete.
Restart Web Server on CentOS 5.2