Laravel 5.4 on PHP 7.0: PDO Exception - Could not find driver (MySQL)

Question

I have a Laravel 5.4 project on my Ubuntu 14.04 (VPS with Plesk 12.5.30). After creating the database and setted up the .env file with required information I ran php artisan migrate and exceptions were thrown:

[Illuminate\Database\QueryException]
could not find driver (SQL: select * from information_schema.tables where table_schema = pmaramaldb and table_name = migrations)

[PDOException]
could not find driver

My .env file has:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql

DB_HOST=127.0.0.1

DB_PORT=3306

DB_DATABASE=pmaramaldb

DB_USERNAME=user

DB_PASSWORD=password

I've followed most of the guides to solve this error and there wasn't any positive results:

Enabling Extension Solution:

PDO is enabled

The php.ini file is being generated automatically, I guess this is made by Plesk. At the start of the file it says:

; ATTENTION!
;
; DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE BECAUSE IT WAS GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY,
; SO ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST THE NEXT TIME THE FILE IS GENERATED.

So I've tried it anyway. After that I've restarted Apache and then tried again... Didn't work.

Installing php7.0-mysql Solution:

I've also tried to install MySQL in case is not:

user@server:/var/www/vhosts$ sudo apt-get install php7.0-mysql

Leyendo lista de paquetes... Hecho

Creando árbol de dependencias

Leyendo la información de estado... Hecho

php7.0-mysql is already the newest version.

0 actualizados, 0 se instalarán, 0 para eliminar y 67 no actualizados.

** SQL Lite Install Solution:**

I've also tried as question link says: sudo apt-get install php5-sqlite and the result was:

user@server:/var/www/vhosts/system/maramal.io/etc$ sudo apt-get install php5-sqlite

Leyendo lista de paquetes... Hecho

Creando árbol de dependencias

Leyendo la información de estado... Hecho

php5-sqlite is already the newest version.

0 actualizados, 0 se instalarán, 0 para eliminar y 67 no actualizados.

Composer Dump-autoload Solution:

It didn't work either. I've tried composer dump-autoload and it didn't work.

After ran the command php -i:

PDO

PDO support => enabled

PDO drivers =>

...

PHP Version => 5.6.30-1+deb.sury.org~trusty+1

Well, I am not sure if this has anything to do with the error, but the version shown by running php -v is:

user@server: ~/path$ php -v

PHP 5.6.30-1+deb.sury.org~trusty+1 (cli)

Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group

Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2016, by Zend Technologies

it reads like you do have taken the usual steps. time to double check some basics: did you perhaps set laravel up to use another db type, mssql or postgresql? is there a mixup of php versions on the server (i think ubuntu 14.04 uses php5.x per default) — cypherabe
May be worth doing a php -i in the CLI to make sure that it matches the web based one. Sometimes you may get a different PHP version on the CLI than the one in apache. — apokryfos
hmm... another idea: if i understand the process correctly, the error occures in a php cli call. Did you see the answer by leith in the linked question? php-cli uses another ini file, maybe it could be that the pdo driver is not activated in that case — cypherabe
@Maramal best thing to do is do which php find the one that currently runs, delete it and link the PHP 7 binary in your /usr/bin or other path dir. Your current CLI php doesn't have any PDO drivers — apokryfos
@Maramal try mv /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php.old and then ln -s /path/to/php/bin/php /usr/bin/php Don't know where you have PHP installed though you may need to look for it (phpinfo may say where it is) — apokryfos

apokryfos apokryfos · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-21T11:32:32

There's a conflict between the PHP that is used by Apache and the PHP that is linked to the command line. (It happens more often that it should to be honest).

What is typically done is:

which php

This tells you which php will be expecuted when running in the command line. e.g. /usr/bin/php

mv /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php.old

Then link or copy the correct PHP version to an executable path:

ln -s /path/to/php/bin/php /usr/bin/php

or the following should also work.

cp /path/to/php/bin/php /usr/bin/php

Also suggested if you want to be able to manually install mods:

ln -s /path/to/php/bin/phpize /usr/bin/phpize
ln -s /path/to/php/bin/php-config /usr/bin/php-config

This way your CLI will match your webserver.

Update:

If as noted in this answer if you are using Ubuntu with multiple alternative installations of PHP you can do:

sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php<version>
sudo update-alternatives --set phar /usr/bin/phar<version>
sudo update-alternatives --set phar.phar /usr/bin/phar.phar<version> 
sudo update-alternatives --set phpize /usr/bin/phpize<version> 
sudo update-alternatives --set php-config /usr/bin/php-config<version>

Laravel 5.4 on PHP 7.0: PDO Exception - Could not find driver (MySQL)

11 Answers