Geolocation Database

nProbe Cento includes Geolocation support provided by the following companies

The geolocation implementation is based on a database file stored locally with no cloud access whatsoever.

You can choose to install the free (albeit not very accurate) GeoIP databases or the commercial ones.

Using MaxMind geolocation

New privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, place restrictions that impact our ability to distre MaxMind GeoLite2 databases in our packages. Reasons are explained in detail at the following page https://blog.maxmind.com/2019/12/18/significant-changes-to-accessing-and-using-geolite2-databases/. For this reason you are required to register for a MaxMind account and obtain a license key in order to download GeoLite2 geolocation databases.

The steps below are necessary to use geolocation.

Register for a MaxMind account at https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/signup.

Create a license key at https://www.maxmind.com/en/accounts/current/license-key.

  1. Select "Generate New License Key".
  2. Add a license key description and answer "Yes" to the question "Will this key be used for GeoIP Update?".
  3. Then choose one of the two available options "Generate a license key and config file". Choice depends on the installed geoipupdate version. Most likely, installed version is older than 3.1.1 so the correct option to select is "Generate a license key and config file for use with geoipupdate versions older than 3.1.1". If you don't know the version type geoipupdate -V.

Once the license is created, you will be promted to download file GeoIP.conf which contains account id and license key necessary to download the databases. Download and place this file in /etc/GeoIP.conf.

Make sure that the EditionIDs section (or ProductIds according to the geoipupdate version) in /etc/GeoIP.conf contains GeoLite2-Country GeoLite2-City GeoLite2-ASN (GeoLite2-ASN could be missing by default).

Run sudo geoipupdate to download the database files or manually download database files GeoLite2-ASN.mmdb and GeoLite2-City.mmdb from the "GeoIP2 / GeoLite2" > "Download Files" section of your MaxMind account page

In order to update the database you can use geoipupdate. Instructions to use geoipupdate are available at https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoipupdate/

Using DB-IP Lite

DB-IP Lite geolocation databseses dbip-city-lite, dbip-asn-lite and dbip-country-lite can be downloaded from https://db-ip.com/db/

Install DB files

Downloaded database files (mmdb) should be moved under one of the below folders:

  • /var/lib/GeoIP
  • /usr/share/GeoIP
  • ./geoip (when running nProbe Cento manually, same folder)

And their name should match:

  • GeoLite2-ASN.mmdb
  • GeoLite2-City.mmdb

or

  • dbip-asn*.mmdb
  • dbip-city*.mmdb
mkdir /var/lib/GeoIP
mv GeoLite2-ASN.mmdb /var/lib/GeoIP
mv GeoLite2-City.mmdb /var/lib/GeoIP

Restart nProbe Cento. Upon restart, software will automatically locate and load the downloaded databases.