How to Setup ionCube Loader on CentOS 7

ionCube Loader is a PHP extension that allows a web-server to execute PHP files that have been encoded using ionCube Encoder and is required to run the majority of commercial PHP Applications.

In this article, we will be installing ionCube Loader on CentOS 7 for PHP 7.1. Instructions for other platforms may vary.

Prerequisites

• A CentOS 7 x64 instance.
• An Apache web server properly installed. Say the web root directory is /var/www/html.
• PHP version 7.1.
• A sudo user.
• Firewall rules finely tuned. At least the HTTP 80 port should be open.

Step 1: Download and prepare ionCube Loader packages for CentOS 7

Since CentOS 7 is a 64-bit Linux distribution, you should download the ionCube 64-bit Linux package as follows:

cd
wget https://downloads.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz
sudo tar -zxvf ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz -C /usr/lib64/php/modules
sudo chown -R root:root /usr/lib64/php/modules/ioncube
sudo cp /usr/local/ioncube/loader-wizard.php /var/www/html
sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Now, an ionCube Loader setup script loader-wizard.php has been copied to the web root directory /var/www/html. We will use that script to Configure and test ionCube Loader on the server.

Note: This tutorial assumes your Document Root is /var/www/html. If you have your web server configured differently, you need to place loader-wizard.php in a directory where you can access it via your web browser.

Step 2: Configure ionCube Loader

1) Point your web browser to http://203.0.113.1/loader-wizard.php to enter the ionCube Loader Wizard interface.

2) In the ionCube Loader Wizard interface, choose the Dedicated or VPS (server with full root ssh access) option.

3) Input hosting provider name and URL as follows:

• Name of your hosting provider Vultr
• URL of your hosting provider https://www.vultr.com

4) click the Next button.

5) Create an PHP ini file to specify the location of ionCube Loader for PHP 7.1:

echo 'zend_extension = /usr/lib64/php/modules/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_7.1.so' | sudo tee /etc/php.d/00-ioncube.ini

Note: If your version of PHP is different from PHP 7.1, you should specify the proper ionCube Loader file in above command accordingly. Use the command php -v to confirm the PHP version.

6) Restart Apache to load the update:

sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

7) Go back to the ionCube Loader Wizard interface, and then use the link click here to test the Loader to test your installation.

8) If nothing goes wrong, you should see the Loader Installed Successfully message.

9) For security purposes, you should delete the IonCube loader wizard script in the web root directory once you pass the test:

sudo rm /var/www/html/loader-wizard.php

That’s all. Having the ionCube Loader module properly installed, you are eligible to install any app licensed with ionCube on your server now. Enjoy it.