ionCube Loader, returning empty screen - php

Question

I am attempting to install ionCube on my VPS from DigitalOcean and I have ran the install and selected the appropriate options but then it simply returns a screen with the header of ionCube but then it has a banner saying "IMPORTANT: Ensure that This Script Is Removed When No Longer Required" followed by a single line of writing that says "ionCube Loader Wizard" and does nothing. In addition the application that it using ionCube says it is still not installed.

Answer 1

The empty Wizard page might indicate that a few PHP functions are disabled, though without the output of your phpinfo(); I can only guess.
DigitalOcean themselves have instructions on how to install the Loader, which can be found here. These are applicable to most VPS with slight alterations. A rough summary in case the link isn't available:
Get and unpack the newest Loader on your server: (if you are not on DigitalOcean please choose your own Loaders here)
32bit:
wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86.tar.gz
tar xvfz ioncube_loaders_lin_x86.tar.gz
64bit:
wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz
tar xvfz ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz
Find out your extensions directory:
php -i | grep extension_dir
Which will yield something like
extension_dir => /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs => /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs
Copy the Loader to the extensions directory:
PHP_VERSION=$(php -r "echo PHP_MAJOR_VERSION.'.'.PHP_MINOR_VERSION;")
sudo cp "ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_${PHP_VERSION}.so" /your/extensions/dir
For example with the previous output:
PHP_VERSION=$(php -r "echo PHP_MAJOR_VERSION.'.'.PHP_MINOR_VERSION;")
sudo cp "ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_${PHP_VERSION}.so" /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/
Add the zend_extension entry to your php.ini. This step is not described in the DigitalOcean tutorial, it seems that their PHP is set up to load any extension in the extensions directory I assume, so this might not be necessary for you.
Find out where your php.ini file is (or better yet, plugin directory):
php -i | grep "Loaded Config"
php -i | grep "Scan this dir"
You will get something like this:
Loaded Configuration File => /etc/php.ini
Scan this dir for additional .ini files => /etc/php.d
You can either add this entry to the top of your php.ini (in this case in /etc/php.ini), or add a new file 00-ioncube in your ini directory (in this case /etc/php.d/00-ioncube with this content:
zend_extension = "<path to your ioncube loader>"
As an example with PHP 5.5 and the previous path:
zend_extension = "/usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/ioncube_loader_lin_5.4.so"
Restart your webservers:
service apache2 restart
service php5-fpm restart
Do remember to delete the ionCube Loader Script you installed from your server, since this might pose a security risk if left on the server.
In case something goes wrong, check the output your phpinfo();, verify that you have the correct Loaders installed (pay attention to thread safety, architecture and PHP version) and get the Loaders manually from here, and again make sure to choose the right one.
If it still does not work, check your error.log (typically in /var/log/apache2/error.log or /var/log/httpd/error_log) to see if the Loader is being picked up. The ionCube Support is also available should there be any problems.