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I’ve recently was required to install PHP GeOIP on one of the Linux servers I do maintain here is how I did it:

1. Install support for GeoIP
– Luckily though on Debian Linux there is a bundled deb package, so installation is trivial and clean.

debian-server:~# apt-get install php5-geoip

2. Furthermore it’s necessery to grasp geoip’s city database

debian-server:~# wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz

– Extract the gz file to prepare it for use by PHP GeoIP:

debian-server:~# /bin/gunzip GeoLiteCity.dat.gz

– Move the GeoLiteCity.dat file to /usr/share/GeoIP like so:

debian-server:~# mv GeoLiteCity.dat /usr/share/GeoIP

Now in order for the new geoip database to be red by PHP GeoIP we need to restart the Apache Webserver.

debian-server:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

3. It’s also recommendable to update periodically the Geo IP GeoLiteCity.dat database in order to be always up-to-date with the latest IP location information provided out there, to do so I’ve created a 3 liner that does the job.

To start using the geoip_update.sh download it from here and set it to execute via cron.

debian-server:~# cd /usr/sbin;
debian-server:~# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/bshscr/geoip_update.sh
debian-server:~# echo "02 00 1 * * /usr/sbin/geoip_update.sh >/dev/null 2>&1" | crontab -

That’s all now PHP GeoIP database will be updated once a month on day 01 at 02:00 a.m.

Now in order to check if your PHP GeoIP is ready to go and used by php scripts.

Create a new sample script, let’s say check_php_geoip.php and put in it:

<php
print_r(geoip_record_by_name('php.net'));
>

Place the script somewhere under your Apache document root and invoke it via a browser, if it executes correctly you should get an output similar to:

Array ( [country_code] => BG [country_code3] => BGR [country_name] => Bulgaria [region] => 40 [city] => Dobric [postal_code] => [latitude] => 43.5666999817 [longitude] => 27.8332996368 [dma_code] => 0 [area_code] => 0 )

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Tags: How to Install and Setup and Test GeOIP support in PHP on Apache2 in Debian Lenny Linux

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Linux, System Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.