How to restrict access to your website from a country

By Neethu
in General
Mar 5, 2016 .
1 min

Requisites: Apache module, mod_maxminddb, libmaxminddb

INSTRUCTIONS:

1.Download and install libmaxminddb

[root@pidev ~]# git clone --recursive https://github.com/maxmind/libmaxminddb
[root@pidev ~]# cd libmaxminddb
[root@pidev libmaxminddb]# ./bootstrap
[root@pidev libmaxminddb]# ./configure
2.Run the following

[root@pidev libmaxminddb]# make
[root@pidev libmaxminddb]# make install

3. Download and install the Apache module `mod_maxminddb`

[root@pidev ~]# wget https://github.com/maxmind/mod_maxminddb/archive/master.zip
[root@pidev ~]# unzip master.zip
[root@pidev ~]# cd mod_maxminddb-master
[root@pidev mod_maxminddb-master]# ./bootstrap

4. Next,configure by specifying the full path of `apxs`

[root@pidev mod_maxminddb-master]# ./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs
[root@pidev mod_maxminddb-master]# make
[root@pidev mod_maxminddb-master]# make install

5.Download and extract GeoLite Country database

http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-Country.Tar.gz
Note the path of GeoLite2-Country.mmdb file.

6.Make sure you restart Apache web server.

[root@pidev ~]#/etc/init.d/httpd restart

7.Lastly add the following in the domain’s `.htaccess` file (replace the full file path of GeoLite2-Country.mmdb in the server)

MaxMindDBEnable On
MaxMindDBFile DB /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoLite2-Country_20170905/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb
MaxMindDBEnv MM_COUNTRY_CODE DB/country/iso_code
#The below code will block access from Australia and France
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(AU|FR) BlockCountry
Deny from env=BlockCountry