To reload PHP, you now need to restart the IIS web server. The easiest way to do is to restart the World Wide Web Publishing Windows service. You can do this by opening the Services application from the Administrative Tools and restarting the service (please note that this restarts all IIS application pools and websites; if you are hosting other websites and applications on this server, you. In this article, we will explain how to install and configure ionCube Loader with PHP in Debian and Ubuntu distributions. A Ubuntu or Debian server running with a web server (Apache or Nginx) along with a PHP installed. As per your Linux distribution architecture, download ioncube.
Related
How To Build and Deploy Packages for Your FreeBSD Servers Using Buildbot and Poudriere Tutorial
How To Configure MTA-STS and TLS Reporting for Your Domain Using Apache on Ubuntu 18.04 Tutorial
Introduction
ionCube is a PHP module extension that loads encrypted PHP files and speeds up webpages. It is often required for PHP-based applications. In this tutorial, we will install ionCube on a Ubuntu 16.04 server.
Prerequisites
To follow this tutorial, you will need:
- One Ubuntu 16.04 server with a sudo non-root user and firewall, which you can set up by following this initial server setup tutorial.
- A web server with PHP installed, like Apache or Nginx. Follow the steps for installing the web server itself, updating the firewall, and installing PHP.
Step 1 — Choosing the Right ionCube Version
It is important that the version of ionCube you choose matches your PHP version, so first, you need to know:
- The version of PHP our web server is running, and
- If it is 32-bit or 64-bit.
If you have a 64-bit Ubuntu server, you are probably running 64-bit PHP, but let’s make sure. To do so, we’ll use a small PHP script to retrieve information about our server’s current PHP configuration.
Create a file called
info.php
file in the root directory of your web server (likely /var/www/html
, unless you’ve changed it) using nano
or your favorite text editor. Paste the following inside the file, then save and close it.
After saving the changes to the file, visit
http://your_server_ip/info.php
in your favorite browser. The web page you’ve opened should look something like this:From that page, look at the header at the top where it says PHP Version. In this case, we’re running 7.0.8. Then, look at the System line. If it ends with x86_64, you’re running 64-bit PHP; if it ends with i686, it’s 32-bit.
With this information, you can proceed with the download and installation.
Step 2 — Setting Up ionCube
Visit the ionCube download page and find the appropriate download link based on your OS. In our example, we need the this 64-bit Linux version. Copy the tar.gz link on the site and download the file.
Next, extract the archive.
![Install php7 2 ioncube Install php7 2 ioncube](http://ioncube.com/images/installer.jpg)
This creates a directory named
ioncube
which contains various files for various PHP versions. Choose the right folder for your PHP version. In our example, we need the file PHP version 7.0
, which is ioncube_loader_lin_7.0.so
. We will copy this file to the PHP extensions folder.To find out the path of the extensions folder, check the
http://your_server_ip/info.php
page again and search for extension_dir.In this example, it’s
/usr/lib/php/20151012
, so copy the file there:For PHP to load the extension, we need to add it to the PHP configuration. We can do it in the main
php.ini
PHP configuration file, but it’s cleaner to create a separate file. We can set this separate file to load before other extensions to avoid possible conflicts.To find out where we should create the custom configuration file, look at
http://your_server_ip/info.php
again and search for Scan this dir for additional .ini files.So, we’ll create a file named
00-ioncube.ini
inside the /etc/php/7.0/apache2/conf.d
directory. The 00
at the beginning of the filename ensures this file will be loaded before other PHP configuration files.Paste the following loading directive, then save and close the file.
00-ioncube.ini
For the above change to take effect, we will need to restart the web server.
If you are using Apache, run:
If you are using Nginx, run:
You may also need to restart
php-fpm
, if you’re using it.Finally, let’s make sure that the PHP extension is installed and enabled.
Step 3 — Verifying the ionCube Installation
Back on the
http://your_server_ip/info.php
page, refresh the page and search for the “ionCube” keyword. You should now see with the ionCube PHP Loader (enabled):That confirms that the PHP ionCube extension is loaded on your server.
It can be a bit of a security risk to keep the
info.php
script, as it allows potential attackers to see information about your server, so remove it now.You can also safely remove the extra downloaded ionCube files which are no longer necessary.
ionCube is now fully set up and functional.
Conclusion
Now that the ionCube PHP extension has been installed, you can proceed with any PHP application which requires it.