php.ini not loading Ioncube

Question

Out of nothing the Ioncube loader stopped working.

phpinfo()shows that there is no Ioncube loaded, and the website displays a HTML-500 error with "redirected you too many times" after turning on display_errors.

according to phpinfo() /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini is the apache php configuration file.

The first line of /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini reads

zend_extension=/usr/local/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.6.so

and the file ist located in the folder as previously.

php -v was outputing some errors and warnings and after a debug attempt, I could fix them by manipulating /etc/php5/cli/php.ini, replacing some lines referring to older versions of the Ioncube and now it outputs

PHP 5.6.20-0+deb8u1 (cli) (built: Apr 27 2016 11:26:05)
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies with the ionCube PHP Loader (enabled) + Intrusion Protection from ioncube24.com (unconfigured) v5.0.18, Copyright (c) 2002-2015, by ionCube Ltd. with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2016, by Zend Technologies

Still, phpinfo() shows no Ioncube loaded and the error remains.

There seems to be similar problem reported here, Failed loading /usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so but with no definitive answer.

I am dealing with multiple php.ini files and this may explain why the discrepancy, but I cannot find the solution. Do you have any idea how I could debug this?

Answer 1

You should make sure you load ionCube encoder before any other zend_extension in your php.ini file.

You should also take note of error_reporting setting in your php.ini, if you have already set your php.ini file to report all errors and especially before loading the ioncube loader i.e

error_reporting=~E_ALL|~E_STRICT

You might get errors, but once you observe the aforementioned and update your php.ini, go ahead and save the changes and restart your apache

sudo apachectl restart

I hope this fixes your problem. Cheers!!