Somewhere in your php .ini files the above ini is required find it and then remove the line then enable it directly form main php.ini, or simply create the .ini file in the above directory:

create the following file :

 \etc\php5\mods-available\mcrypt.ini

and add the following config to it:

; configuration for php MCrypt module
extension=mcrypt.so

restart your websever (or php fcgi)

So I added the following to /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini file:

extension=mcrypt.so

and restarted apache.

The message "Mcrypt PHP extension required." still appears. However in my php info() shows that Mcrypt - enabled.

I looked at /etc/php5/mods-available/mcrypt.ini file and found empty inside the file, then I wrote

extension=mcrypt.so

but I got this error message during saving.

"mcrypt.ini" E166: Can't open linked file for writing

Notes: I have conf.dmcrypt.ini and mcrypt.ini files inside the mods-available folder and both files are empty.

hc.

Chanjay his last steps solved it for me too.

Here is an article describes you to know more installation procedures of mcrypt with windows, linux, and Mac.

http://www.kvcodes.com/2014/07/laravel-requires-mcrypt-php-extension/

Im using Ubuntu 14.04 also. After installing the php5-mcrypt, the problem is that the package doesn't create a link for the php5 CLI (used by composer/artisan), so the correct thing to do is to run the following commands:

1. cd /etc/php5/cli/conf.d
2. sudo ln -s ../../mods-available/mcrypt.ini 20-mcrypt.ini

I did that and it's working fine without making changes on php.ini.

s0ckz's solution solved this issue for me. using nginx on linux mint 17 cinnamon..

Sorry for bumping this old thread, but I got the same problem, tried everything but didn't worked.

But then I tried php5enmod (and a service restart):

sudo php5enmod mcrypt && sudo service php5-fpm restart

That solved my issue and everything looks fine now.