This is more of a heads-up post…
Currently, I’m trying to debug an issue with some custom modules I developed for my main project. I figured I’d quickly build another server so I could test some things between 2.2.2 and 2.2.5. In the rush that I was in, I selected a Ubuntu OS 18.04 instead of a 16.04.
During the installation of PHP modules, I kept getting an error:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package php-mcrypt is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'php-mcrypt' has no installation candidate
It turns out that Ubuntu 18.04 doesn’t natively support some PHP packages that Magento 2 requires. Rather than create a workaround I just wiped the server and started again with 16.04 which went smoothly.
I was aware that Magento are working on replacing some of the PHP dependencies for the big-ish 2.3 update. I assume they’re old or insecure or something, I don’t really know.
I guess when Magento 2.3 is released I’ll be looking at a substantial overhaul in documentation/videos for installing Magento on a web server.