MaxMind IP City Location Support
Categories: Installation, Tips and Tricks, Windows Application
The Live Help v3.90 and above supports IP City level location detection. We support the MaxMind GeoLite City (free) and MaxMind GeoIP City (paid with higher accuracy) databases. These databases are not included with the Live Help downloads (due to the size of the database) so you will need to download the latest database from the MaxMind web site. The following instructions are for installing the database.
- Download the MaxMind GeoLite City database at GeoLite City (Approx. 18MB)
- Unzip the file on your local PC, you can use a free tool like 7zip for unzipping the GeoLiteCity.dat.gz file.
- Upload the GeoLiteCity.dat file to the /livehelp/plugins/maxmind/ directory. The file is approximately 30MB so this may take some time.
- The GeoLite database should be located at /livehelp/plugins/maxmind/GeoLiteCity.dat when finished uploading
The MaxMind GeoLite database is updated each month (normally on the 1st of each month) so you can replace this file every month if you wish to use the most accurate location data. Further details on the MaxMind GeoLite City database is available at http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity
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Is it safe to assume that uploading the dat file is all that needs to be done in order to take advantage of the data within the file?
David, yes you should also confirm that you are running v3.90 of the Live Help Server Software. Earlier versions of Live Help will not work with the MaxMind GeoIP and GeoLite databases.
Can we have function that upgrades GeoIP City database automatically?
Bryan, the MaxMind databases are quite big and need to be downloaded from their web site, unzipped and uploaded. This would be quite difficult to automate within PHP (as possibly against the MaxMind terms of service) as we are dealing with files that are over 30MB in size.
Yeah, I am not sure what is going on, but when I add the GeoLiteCity.dat file to my web server, in the /modules/livehelp/plugins/maxmind directory, I lose all visitor tracking capabilities until I remove the .dat file. Running Server version 3.90.0 Rev 5 and the newest desktop client.
Chris, we have a patch available for the GeoIP plugin that resolves this intermittent issue. The issue seems to only be occuring on some installation and is related to the multi-byte extension within PHP. We have emailed you the patch that you can upload to your web site to resolve the issue. The patch will also be applied to the next Live Help update after v3.90.
The updated files did the trick, thanks for your help
I have the same problem where I can find that patch?
Diego, we have sent you an email regarding the GeoIP patch. The patch has also been included in the latest Live Help release.
Hello, it seems that in my case the problem with losing visitor tracking still exist even that i installed the latest version. Can I please get a link with the patch?
Thank you,
Alex
Alex, if you are still experiencing issues with the MaxMind plugin and you are using v3.95 of the Live Help server software then please contact technical support or submit a ticket at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/kb/ticket/
I purchased the software in WHMCS and I uploaded the file in the directory. I can’t see the countries of my visitors, the system says unavailable.
Jose, please contact us via. Live Chat or email and we will be able to assist you further. I recommend that you check that the .dat file was extracted correctly and compare the size of the file you uploaded to the size of the file on your local system.
For those who are interested in having the GeoLiteCity.dat updated automatically after the first Tuesday of the month (I use the 8th day of the month to ensure that a Tuesday has passed), you can set this cronjob up:
wget -q -P /PATH_TO/livehelp/plugins/maxmind http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz && gunzip /PATH_TO/livehelp/plugins/maxmind/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz && rm /PATH_TO/livehelp/plugins/maxmind/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz*
So it does 3 things. First, it does a WGET on the the GeoLiteCity.dat.gz file (grabbing the latest data). Then it gunzips the gz file, and finally it removes the gz file. I use && so that it only performs the 2nd and 3rd steps if the previous steps successfully executed.
Do you support IP2Location LITE DB9?
It is a free database with ZIP code information.
Tim, unfortunately at the moment we only support the MaxMind database. In our experience this is the most accurate database that is available.