This works for Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS distributions. You need a valid license key from MaxMind. This is available as a subscription at a nominal fee.

If you have installed GeoIP successfully, you should have the geoipupdate program. If you don’t, you need the run the following.

Install over Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt-get install geoip-bin geoip-database libgeoip-dev

Install over CentOS:

sudo yum install re2c geoip geoip-data geoip-devel

Both libgeoip-dev and geoip-devel are required for compiling PHP’s GeoIP.

Once you run geoipupdate the first time, it tells you about a missing GeoIP file.

root@gladlycode:~# geoipupdate 
Error opening GeoIP Configuration file /etc/GeoIP.conf

Now you copy over from the default file:

mv /etc/GeoIP.conf.default /etc/GeoIP.conf

If you now run geoipupdate, you get the following:

MD5 Digest of installed database is f5c2f7eed9331dcaa99b7a6b4633b684
Invalid UserID

Log into your MaxMind account if you are already a paying customer and get the API keys.

Edit your /etc/GeoIP.conf file to add in the license key. It should look something like the following:

LicenseKey <Your License Key>

# Enter your User ID here
UserId <Your Numerical User Id>

# Enter the Product ID(s) of the database(s) you would like to update
# By default 106 (MaxMind GeoIP Country) is listed below
ProductIds 106

And you run geoipupdate again:

root@gladlycode:~# geoipupdate 
MD5 Digest of installed database is f5c2f7eed9331dcaa99b7a6b4633b684
Updating /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat
Updated database

Great success. And you will want to automate these updates. To do so, add it to cron job.

crontab -e

Add the following line:

0 5 * * * /usr/bin/geoipupdate

This will automatically fetch updates for you.