Appendix H – Quick Testing with XAMPP

Important

XAMPP is for quick testing and evaluation only. It is not secure enough for a production deployment, and Reprise does not support using it in production. For a production install, see Appendix F (Oracle Linux 8) or Appendix G (Ubuntu 26.04), or install Apache/PHP/MySQL natively per the Requirements in Activation Pro Setup (local server).

XAMPP is a pre-configured Apache/MySQL/PHP (AMP) stack available for Windows and Linux from the Apache Friends website: https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html. It is free, comes pre-built for the platforms RLM Activation Pro supports, and is the stack Reprise uses to test Activation Pro, which makes it a convenient way to get a disposable environment running quickly to evaluate the product.

Step 1. Install XAMPP

To start, you need the stack of web services to support RLM Activation Pro. Download XAMPP for your platform from the Apache Friends website: https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

Follow the included instructions to install XAMPP on your system.

(Recommended) Replace MariaDB with MySQL in XAMPP

MySQL Community Server over MariaDB

The latest versions of XAMPP come with MariaDB. If you want to use MariaDB server you need to configure it to use TLS/SSL with your own certificates. Because of this, we recommend using MySQL Community Server at least for testing.

Important

Use MySQL 8.0.42

Due to changes in later versions of MySQL, please use version 8.0.42 for Activation Pro: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/

  • Rename xampp-directory\mysql to xampp-directory\mariadb

  • Extract the downloaded zip archive to xampp-directory\mysql. Make sure you extract the folder level which has the subfolders bin, include, lib etc.

  • Copy xampp-directory\mariadb\bin\my.ini to xampp-directory\mysql\bin

  • Open xampp-directory\mysql\bin\my.ini in an editor and comment out the line starting with key_buffer= in the [mysqld] section.

  • Open a command prompt (or terminal on Linux) and run the following commands:

cd C:\xampp\mysql
bin\mysqld --initialize-insecure
start /b bin\mysqld
bin\mysql -u root

mysql
CREATE USER pma@localhost;
SOURCE C:/xampp/phpMyAdmin/sql/create_tables.sql;
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, ALTER ON phpmyadmin.* TO pma@localhost;
ALTER USER root@localhost IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '';
ALTER USER pma@localhost IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '';
exit

bin\mysqladmin -u root shutdown # bin/mysqladmin -u root shutdown

  • Start Apache and MySQL in the XAMPP Control Panel.

  • Go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin and verify that your database server is now reported as MySQL Community Server.

Step 2. Install ActPro

RLM Activation Pro operates on a particular RLM binary platform, and is supported on Windows x86_64 and Linux x86_64 systems:

  1. Download the Activation Pro kit from the Reprise website (requires login): https://reprisesoftware.com/support/publishers/developer-kits-for-software-publishers/

    Pick the appropriate platform, and save this on your system.

  2. Extract kit contents to xampp-directory/htdocs

  3. Navigate to http://localhost/actpro_setup/setup.php to finish setup

Step 3. Configure RLM Activation Pro

Copy your License Generator Settings file from your RLM kit

You can create the license generator settings file (isvname.gen) on any supported RLM platform. To create it, execute the following command in the configured RLM kit area:

rlmsign -generator

Copy the resulting file (isvname.gen) to the main ActPro directory (e.g. actpro.x86_l2) and the actpro_setup directory. If you are copying between Unix and Windows systems, be sure that your copy program doesn’t insert carriage-control characters. The easiest way to make sure of this is to check the file size to make sure it is the same after copying.

  • Install the RLM Activation Pro files on your web server

  • FTP the contents of the actpro_setup directory to your ISP’s web server space, e.g. //yourdomain.com/actpro_setup (or copy to your web server if it is local)

  • Make sure that the actpro_setup directory is mode rwx to the web user.

  • Make sure that actpro_setup/actpro.php is writable by the web user.

  • Run the Activation Pro setup program.

  • On Windows: Run the XAMPP control panel. Start the Apache and MySQL services. On Linux, this happened as part of installation. If you are running at your ISP, you can skip this step.

  • Point your browser (Firefox or Chrome recommended) to: http://localhost/actpro_setup/setup.php

  • The defaults in the form should be correct, so press “Setup activation database”. REMEMBER the admin account username and password – you will need this later. (The default is admin and admin).

Note

If you are going to host your servers at your ISP, many ISPs have naming conventions for MySQL databases, and, in addition, many ISPs will not allow you to create a new database from a script, the way that Activation Pro’s setup.php software does it. If this is the case, simply create the database manually using your ISP’s administration tools, then run setup.php after the database is created.

Security Considerations

Once your Activation Pro software is installed, you will want to check the permissions on all files and perform other security checks on your website. While this list is not complete, it is a good start:

  1. Remove the directory actpro_setup on your web server. You no longer need this. (Note that setup normally does this).

  2. Change the modes of the following files, as shown (the setup program attempts to do this, but on some servers the file modes are not set correctly):

    • all .php files – mode 0400

    • all other files (including all files in the images directory) – mode 0444

  3. Make sure that your cgi-bin/isvname_mklic program (or isvname.gen file) is read-execute to owner, i.e., mode 500.

  4. You should set up a .htaccess file to protect access to the ActPro directory. Many ISPs have a tool to password-protect the directory. If they don’t you can get help here: http://www.htaccessredirect.net/

  5. Reset permissions of the cgi-bin and htdocs directories to their original settings.

Once your test setup is working the way you’d like, continue with Step 3 in Activation Pro Setup (local server) to install your Activation Pro license, then set up the Activation Database.