The mcrypt extension is an interface to the mcrypt cryptography library. This extension is useful for allowing PHP code using mcrypt to run on PHP 7.2+.
The mcrypt extension is included in PHP 5.4 through PHP 7.1. It was removed from PHP 7.2 and moved to an unofficial PECL extension because the mcrypt library is no longer maintained.
For PHP 7.2+, PHP instead uses libsodium as a cryptography library. ServerPilot builds PHP 7.2+ with the official libsodium extension. New PHP code should be written to use libsodium rather than mcrypt.
You do not need to install the mcrypt extension on PHP 5, 7.0, or 7.1. ServerPilot builds these PHP versions with the mcrypt extension so it is always available.
To install this extension on PHP 7.2 through 7.4, run the following commands as your server's root user:
sudo apt-get -y install gcc make autoconf libc-dev pkg-config sudo apt-get -y install libmcrypt-dev sudo yes '' | peclX.Y-sp install --nodeps mcrypt-snapshot
Once installed, create a configuration file for the extension and restart PHP by running the following commands as root:
sudo bash -c "echo extension=mcrypt.so > /etc/phpX.Y-sp/conf.d/mcrypt.ini" sudo service phpX.Y-fpm-sp restart
You can check that the extension was installed with this command:
phpX.Y-sp -i | grep mcrypt
The output will look like this:
$ phpX.Y-sp -i | grep mcrypt /etc/phpX.Y-sp/conf.d/mcrypt.ini, Registered Stream Filters => zlib.*, convert.iconv.*, bzip2.*, string.rot13, string.toupper, string.tolower, string.strip_tags, convert.*, consumed, dechunk, mcrypt.*, mdecrypt.* mcrypt mcrypt support => enabled mcrypt_filter support => enabled mcrypt.algorithms_dir => no value => no value mcrypt.modes_dir => no value => no value
To uninstall this extension, as root run the commands:
sudo rm /etc/phpX.Y-sp/conf.d/mcrypt.ini sudo peclX.Y-sp uninstall mcrypt
Next, restart PHP-FPM with the command:
sudo service phpX.Y-fpm-sp restart