I installed PHP 5.4 on my Ubuntu 11.10 PC like this: $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install php5 It's working fine but I don't have the readline function anymore that I need for my PHP CLI scripts. libreadline-dev is installed and readline was working perfectly in 5.3. I also tried to compile 5.4 with readline: $ wget http://de2.php.net/get/php-5.4.0.tar.gz/from/de.php.net/mirror $ tar xzvf mirror $ cd php-5.4.0/ $ ./configure --with-readline $ make test But the last command echoed this error after compiling for some minutes: FAILED TEST SUMMARY Test 7: DTD tests [ext/dom/tests/dom007.phpt] You may have found a problem in PHP. I appreciate any help on how to get readline working!