Appendix G – Installing Activation Pro on Ubuntu 26.04

This appendix walks through installing RLM Activation Pro on a native LAMP stack (Apache, MariaDB/MySQL, PHP) running on Ubuntu 26.04. This is a production-suitable install; for a quick, disposable test environment instead, see Appendix H.

Install Updates

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install a LAMP Stack

Apache:

sudo apt install -y apache2
sudo systemctl enable --now apache2

Database (MariaDB, recommended):

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server
sudo systemctl enable --now mariadb

Note

The steps below assume you will add your own database user and create their credentials. Alternatively, you can use the following:

sudo mysql
CREATE USER 'actprouser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'actprouserpassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'actprouser'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

No further authentication configuration is needed. Ubuntu 26.04’s MariaDB defaults a plain CREATE USER ... IDENTIFIED BY to the mysql_native_password plugin automatically, which is what the Activation Pro license generator binary (statically linked against MariaDB Connector/C) expects.

Using MySQL instead of MariaDB

Ubuntu 26.04’s mysql-server package defaults new user accounts to the caching_sha2_password authentication plugin. The Activation Pro license generator binary is statically linked against MariaDB Connector/C and cannot load that plugin, which causes license generation to fail with -1010 Can't read Activation database even though the setup wizard itself completes successfully (the wizard’s own PHP database connection is unaffected: only the compiled generator binary’s connection fails).

sudo apt install -y mysql-server
sudo systemctl enable --now mysql

To fix, enable the legacy mysql_native_password plugin and create the account with it explicitly. This can only be turned on via a startup option, not a runtime SET GLOBAL:

sudo tee /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/actpro-auth.cnf > /dev/null <<'EOF'
[mysqld]
mysql_native_password=ON
EOF
sudo systemctl restart mysql

sudo mysql
CREATE USER 'actprouser'@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'actprouserpassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'actprouser'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Do this before running the setup wizard. If an account was already created with the default plugin, fix it in place with:

ALTER USER 'actprouser'@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'actprouserpassword';

PHP:

sudo apt install -y php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-gd php-curl php-mbstring
sudo a2enmod cgid
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Note

Installing libapache2-mod-php automatically switches Apache from mpm_event to mpm_prefork (mod_php isn’t thread-safe), and enabling cgid is required for Activation Pro’s CGI license generator binary to run.

Open the firewall:

sudo ufw allow 'Apache Full'

If ufw is inactive on your host, this step is a no-op. Check with sudo ufw status verbose first.

Verify everything is running:

sudo systemctl status apache2
sudo systemctl status mariadb   # or: sudo systemctl status mysql
php -v

Activation Pro Prep

Copy the v17.1 Activation Pro kit to /var/www/html, using whatever file-transfer method fits your environment (scp, sftp, etc.). Then extract the Activation Pro kit:

cd /var/www/html/
sudo tar -xvzf actpro.v17.1BL1-x64_l1.tar.gz

Copy the setup folder to /var/www/html:

sudo cp -r /var/www/html/actpro.x64_l1/actpro_setup /var/www/html/actpro_setup

Set ownership of /var/www so Apache can read and write all files. Ubuntu’s Apache runs as www-data, not apache:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/

CGI Configuration for Activation Pro on Ubuntu

Ubuntu’s apache2.service is sandboxed by systemd (specifically ProtectSystem=full), which makes /usr read-only to Apache regardless of ordinary file ownership. Ubuntu’s default cgi-bin directory (/usr/lib/cgi-bin) lives under /usr, so copies into it during setup will fail silently even after chown.

Relocate cgi-bin to /var/www/cgi-bin, which isn’t affected by this restriction and is already covered by the chown above:

sudo a2disconf serve-cgi-bin
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/cgi-bin
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/cgi-bin
sudo tee /etc/apache2/conf-available/actpro-cgi-bin.conf > /dev/null <<'EOF'
<IfModule mod_alias.c>
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/cgi-bin/
    <Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
        AllowOverride None
        Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</IfModule>
EOF
sudo a2enconf actpro-cgi-bin
sudo systemctl restart apache2

No further configuration is needed for outbound HTTP or MySQL/MariaDB connectivity from PHP. Both work out of the box on Ubuntu once the database user exists.

Activation Pro Installation

  1. In a browser navigate to: http://[IP address or domain name]/actpro_setup/setup.php

    Note: Be sure to update the database user/password, and the Admin account name/password to the correct values for your environment.

    Important: the webserver cgi-bin directory field will autodetect /usr/lib/cgi-bin. Override this to /var/www/cgi-bin (see previous section) or license generation will fail later even though setup appears to succeed.

  2. Click “Setup Activation database”.

    You can ignore this warning: WARNING: chmod 0444 of RLM_Activation_Pro.pdf failed. Please change permission by hand.

  3. Click “Next - Clean up Installation Files”

  4. Click “Done - Start RLC”

No post-setup permissions step is needed here: once the license generator binary lands in /var/www/cgi-bin with its executable bit set, Apache’s mod_cgid will run it.

Activation Pro Configuration

  1. Log into Activation Pro

  2. Navigate to Admin > ActPro License

  3. Choose and upload your Activation Pro license file

  4. Navigate to Admin > Generator Settings

  5. Choose and upload your generator settings file (.gen)