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

Issue

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

Solution

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>

Answered By - apokryfos