If you no longer need third-party PHP extensions you've installed, you can remove them.
To remove a PHP extension, SSH into your server as root and run the following command. Replace EXTENSION with the name of the extension to remove.
sudo rm /etc/phpX.Y-sp/conf.d/EXTENSION.ini
Next, restart PHP-FPM with the command:
sudo service phpX.Y-fpm-sp restart
If the extension was installed on multiple PHP versions, repeat the above steps for each PHP version.
Once you've removed the extension's configuration file, you can choose to remove the extension's library file.
You do not need to remove the library file. As long as you've removed the configuration file as shown above, the extension is removed from PHP.
To remove the library file for an extension installed through PECL, run the following command as root. Replace EXTENSION with the name of the extension.
sudo peclX.Y-sp uninstall EXTENSION
The output of the above command will include the following message:
Unable to remove "extension=EXTENSION.so" from php.ini
This is normal. You've already removed the configuration file as shown above so you can ignore this.
Finally, restart PHP to make sure there are no errors.
sudo service phpX.Y-fpm-sp restart
If you did not correctly remove the extension's configuration file, restarting PHP will show warnings.
If the extension was not installed through PECL, for example if the extension was pre-built or installed with make install, delete the extension's library file with the following command. Replace EXTENSION with the name of the extension.
sudo rm /opt/sp/phpX.Y/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-*/EXTENSION.so
Finally, restart PHP to make sure there are no errors.
sudo service phpX.Y-fpm-sp restart
If you did not correctly remove the extension's configuration file, restarting PHP will show warnings.