Stratus Guides - Install IonCube Loader

Currently, ionCube Loader for PHP 8 is not installed as default on the Stratus Platform due to performance reasons. The following steps can be applied to install it manually for PHP 8.1

Note: ionCube Loader for PHP 8 installation at the server with Webscale Stratus had not been tested, and we cannot guarantee its stability.

To Install IonCube Loader in your Stratus environment, follow these steps:

  1. cd /srv/

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

  3. tar -xvf ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz

  4.    mkdir php_conf
   cp -a /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/* php_conf
   cd php_conf/
   rm zzz_custom.ini
   ln -s /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/zzz_custom.ini ./
   cp /usr/local/etc/php/php.ini ./

  5. While still in php_conf dir, create a file named 00_ioncube.ini with the following content:

echo "zend_extension=/srv/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_8.1.so" > 00_ioncube.ini

  1. Edit /srv/.bash_profile file and add the following:
export PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR=/srv/php_conf
  1. Test. Redeploy the environment, and you should be getting, by default, ionCube loader loaded.
www@somewhere:~$ php -v | grep -i ioncube
    with the ionCube PHP Loader v12.0.2, Copyright (c) 2002-2022, by ionCube Ltd.
  1. Open up a ticket with Webscale Stratus support, so we can add the following environment variables for PHP-FPM.
PHP_INI_SCAN_DIR = /srv/php_conf

Troubleshooting

  • In order to run a cron with ioncube, you will need to configure it as follows so the cron container can locate it:
-p 1; source /srv/.bashrc; COMMAND-TO-BE-EXECUTED
  • Note that currently NewRelic will not work when IonCube is enabled.
Have questions not answered here? Contact Support to get more help.

Last modified on June 3, 2026