How to Install the Sodium Cryptographic Library (libsodium) and PHP Extension on CentOS 7 and CloudLinux 7

Introduction

This article provides the steps needed to install the Sodium Cryptographic Library (libsodium) and PHP Extension on CentOS 7 and CloudLinux 7.

Procedure

1. Access the server's command line as the 'root' user via SSH or "Terminal" in WHM.
2. Use the yum command to verify the EPEL repository is installed properly:

   rpmverify epel-release

   This command will return no output if the package is installed properly. It will inform you if it is not installed, or if there are errors with any rpm controlled files.
3. If the package is not installed, use the yum command to install the EPEL repository 

   yum install epel-release

   If the rpmverify command returns errors with any rpm-controlled files, reinstall EPEL:

   yum reinstall epel-release

4. Use the yum command to install the Sodium library and companion development package.

   yum install libsodium libsodium-devel

5. Install the libsodium PHP extension.
   • To install the PHP extension for ea-php74 and newer:
     1. Login to WHM as the 'root' user.
     2. Navigate to "Home / Software / EasyApache 4."
     3. In the "Currently Installed Packages" section, click the "Customize" button.
     4. Click the "PHP Extensions" link in the left sidebar
     5. Enter "libsodium" into the search box.
     6. Toggle the libsodium extension for each desired version of PHP.
     7. Click the "Review" link in the left sidebar.
     8. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Provision" button.

• To install the PHP extension for ea-php73 and older:
  1. Access the server's command line as the 'root' user via SSH or "Terminal" in WHM.
  2. Run the following command to find the PECL binaries for each version of PHP you have installed:

     find /opt/cpanel/ -iname pecl | grep bin | grep -E "(5[4-6])|(7[0-3])"

  3. Choose the PECL binary path that matches your desired PHP version, and install the libsodium extension.

     /opt/cpanel/ea-php73/root/usr/bin/pecl install libsodium

     Please note that in the above example uses PHP 7.3. Replace ea-php73 with the desired PHP version.