MyVesta Control Panel: Installing and Enabling ionCube Loader on Debian

MyVesta Control Panel (MyVestaCP) is a fork of VestaCP, one of the most famous free control panels used by webmasters to manage servers. By default, the ionCube Loader is not installed and enabled on MyVestaCP. So, if you want to install it, you can follow the following steps. These steps are applicable for Debian 10 system.

• Go to the download page of the ionCube loader, find the download link for the package for Linux (64 bits) and download the package using wget command. E.g.

wget https://downloads.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz

• Once the file is downloaded, extract the file in the current working directory using tar command. E.g.

tar -xf ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz

• Change directory to ionCube and it should have the following files:

ioncube_loader_lin_4.1.so     ioncube_loader_lin_5.5_ts.so
ioncube_loader_lin_4.2.so     ioncube_loader_lin_5.6.so
ioncube_loader_lin_4.3.so     ioncube_loader_lin_5.6_ts.so
ioncube_loader_lin_4.3_ts.so  ioncube_loader_lin_7.0.so
ioncube_loader_lin_4.4.so     ioncube_loader_lin_7.0_ts.so
ioncube_loader_lin_4.4_ts.so  ioncube_loader_lin_7.1.so
ioncube_loader_lin_5.0.so     ioncube_loader_lin_7.1_ts.so
ioncube_loader_lin_5.0_ts.so  ioncube_loader_lin_7.2.so
ioncube_loader_lin_5.1.so     ioncube_loader_lin_7.2_ts.so
ioncube_loader_lin_5.1_ts.so  ioncube_loader_lin_7.3.so
ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so     ioncube_loader_lin_7.3_ts.so
ioncube_loader_lin_5.2_ts.so  LICENSE.txt
ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so     loader-wizard.php
ioncube_loader_lin_5.3_ts.so  README.txt
ioncube_loader_lin_5.4.so     USER-GUIDE.pdf
ioncube_loader_lin_5.4_ts.so  USER-GUIDE.txt
ioncube_loader_lin_5.5.so

• Find the location of the PHP extension directory with the following command:

php -i | grep extension_dir

• The output of the above command should look like this:

extension_dir => /usr/lib/php/20180731 => /usr/lib/php/20180731

• Check the version of PHP installed on your system by running php -v command and then copy the corresponding ionCube loader file (.so file) from the ioncube directory to the extension_dir directory with the following command: (let us say the system has PHP 7.3)

cp ioncube_loader_lin_7.3.so /usr/lib/php/20180731

• Now open PHP CLI php.ini file (/etc/php/7.3/cli/php.ini) in an editor and add the following line at the end of the file.

zend_extension=/usr/lib/php/20180731/ioncube_loader_lin_7.3.so

• If you are using PHP-FPM, open FPM php.ini file (/etc/php/7.3/fpm/php.ini) in an editor and add the following line at the end of the file.

zend_extension=/usr/lib/php/20180731/ioncube_loader_lin_7.3.so

• Restart PHP-FPM and your web servers (Apache and/or Nginx).

systemctl restart php7.3-fpm.service
systemctl restart apache2.service
systemctl restart nginx.service

• Run the command php -v to check if ionCube is installed and enabled. The output should look like this:

PHP 7.3.11-1~deb10u1 (cli) (built: Oct 26 2019 14:14:18) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.3.11, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
    with the ionCube PHP Loader + ionCube24 v10.3.9, Copyright (c) 2002-2019, by ionCube Ltd.
    with Zend OPcache v7.3.11-1~deb10u1, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

• Go back to the directory (cd ..) where you downloaded the tar file of the ionCube loader and remove the ioncube directory and the downloaded tar file with the following commands.

rm -rf ioncube
rm -rf ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz