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How do I install mod_geoip?

Aaron Horsley
  • Updated

Introduction

How can I install MaxMind GeoIP on my cPanel server? 

Procedure

Please note:

  • Maxmind mod_geoip is reaching End of Life May of 2022 and is not provided by cPanel.
  • Maxmind is encouraging the use of the maxminddb_module instead of mod_geoip.
  • There is no cPanel provided package or PHP modules for EA-PHP8 at this time.
  • cPanel does not provide the maxminddb_module, mod_geoip module, or the database files.

It is possible to install the Apache modules for Maxmind GeoIP and Maxminddb as well as the database files and PHP modules for your cPanel server. 

You will first need to register with MaxMind for an account in order to download the GeoLite2 free database. You can sign up here. MaxMind Geolite2 

Installing geoipupdate

Next, we need to remove the old version of geoipupdate and install the newest version of the geoipupdate RPM. This will automatically update the databases. This can be found on the Maxmind GitHub page. https://github.com/maxmind/geoipupdate/releases 

As of Jul 12, 2023, the latest release is 6.

First, verify the old RPM is present.

$ rpm -qa |grep geoipupdate

Then remove the RPM, replacing geoipupdate with the version that was returned from the previous command.

$ rpm -e --justdb --nodeps geoipupdate-2.5.0-1.el7.x86_64

Next, we install the newest version.

$ rpm -i https://github.com/maxmind/geoipupdate/releases/download/v6.0.0/geoipupdate_6.0.0_linux_amd64.rpm

After the install has completed, modify /etc/GeoIP.conf with the correct information for your account. You can find a preconfigured file here pre-filled configuration file, however, within the file, you do need to modify the YOUR_LICENSE_KEY_HERE section with the key you previously generated in your MaxMind account. Save this information to /etc/GeoIP.conf

Finally to get the databases, run

$ geoipupdate

If you would like to automate the updates for the databases, add the following to the root cron.

16 11 * * 1,3 /usr/local/bin/geoipupdate 

Create a Root user cron job

This will complete the installation for geoipupdate.

For the GeoIP PHP Modules:

To install GeoIP through yum and the GeoIP packages from Pecl.

$ yum install GeoIP GeoIP-devel

For PHP 5.4 through 5.6, replacing X with your version, you can run:

$ /usr/bin/ea-php5X-pecl install geoip

For 7 and above:

$ /usr/bin/ea-php7X-pecl install geoip-1.1.1

For the maxminddb PHP Modules:

For PHP 5.4 through 5.6, replacing X with your version, you can run:

$ /usr/bin/ea-php5X-pecl install maxminddb

For 7 and above:

$ /usr/bin/ea-php7X-pecl install maxminddb

For the Apache module and library:

You must first install  ea-apache24-devel:

$ yum install ea-apache24-devel

Then, for the libmaxminddb library, https://github.com/maxmind/libmaxminddb

$ wget https://github.com/maxmind/libmaxminddb/releases/download/1.6.0/libmaxminddb-1.6.0.tar.gz
$ tar -xf libmaxminddb-1.6.0.tar.gz
$ cd libmaxminddb-1.6.0
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ make install
$ ldconfig

If after installing, you receive an error that libmaxminddb.so.0 is missing you may need to add the lib directory in your prefix to your library path. On most Linux distributions when using the default prefix (/usr/local), you can do this by running the following commands:

$ sudo sh -c "echo /usr/local/lib >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local.conf"
$ ldconfig

For mod_maxminddb:

https://github.com/maxmind/mod_maxminddb/ 

$ wget https://github.com/maxmind/mod_maxminddb/releases/download/1.2.0/mod_maxminddb-1.2.0.tar.gz
$ tar -xf mod_maxminddb-1.2.0.tar.gz
$ cd mod_maxminddb-1.2.0
$ ./configure
$ make install

For mod_geoip:

https://github.com/maxmind/geoip-api-mod_geoip2 

$ wget https://github.com/maxmind/geoip-api-mod_geoip2/archive/refs/tags/1.2.10.zip
$ unzip 1.2.10.zip
$ cd geoip-api-mod_geoip2-1.2.10/
$ apxs -i -a -L/usr/local/lib -I/usr/local/include -lGeoIP -c mod_geoip.c

 

Verify the syntax is correct with $ httpd -t, and if you receive Syntax OK, then restart Apache. 

$ /scripts/restartsrv_httpd

 

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