Segmentation fault using ionCube Loader v15.5.0, PHP 8.3+ and xDebug v3.5.0

[andp97]

Hi everyone,

we develop WHMCS modules and we are trying to find a reliable way to debug our own module code with Xdebug while running WHMCS with ionCube Loader enabled.

There is an open/closed Xdebug issue about crashes when Xdebug 3.3+ and ionCube Loader are loaded together:

https://bugs.xdebug.org/view.php?id=2244

Xdebug’s compatibility docs also state that Xdebug does not work together with ionCube or similar extensions that interact with PHP internals:

https://xdebug.org/docs/compat

Our current test setup is:

Xdebug: 3.5.1
PHP: 8.3 / 8.4
ionCube Loader: 15.5.0
Docker: php:8.3-fpm-bookworm / php:8.4-fpm-bookworm
Web server: httpd:alpine proxying to php-fpm

With this setup we get PHP segfaults. PHP 8.1 FPM does not seem to trigger the same issue for us.

We used PHP 8.1 since WHMCS v8.13, upgrading our stack to WHMCS 9.0 and PHP 8.3, we are unable to use xDebug.

We are not trying to debug WHMCS encoded core files. We only need WHMCS to run normally while debugging our own modules, hooks, and integration code.

Has anyone found a stable workflow for this?

Reaching the ionCube support we have this feedback:

Quote

Hi,
Thanks for creating a ticket.
This incompatibility is already known and there is no workaround for it.
The only way around this would be for the ionCube Loader to disable the internal Observer API (which Xdebug uses) which would mean that Xdebug would effectively be uninstalled. 
Apart from that we would have to completely re-engineer our encoding format since the problem stems from the byte code of encoded functions being in a different format from the "standard" byte code of functions in PHP after compilation.  
Kind regards,
--
ionCube Support

 

Any practical setup or workaround would be appreciated.

[andp97]

 @PapaKai  Maybe you encountered a similar issue?

[PapaKai]

Sorry for my late reply. Yes, we run into this trouble as well.
I didn't receive the notification for an unknown reason...

-> 0002244: xDebug 3.3.x crashes Apache on Ubuntu 22.04 via WSL2; PHP 8.1, seeking resolution. - MantisBT
Is a bug reported by my team 🙂

While the author of xdebug was no help at all, here is what we did:

• using Ubuntu 24
• php-fpm 8.3 and no longer the standard php
• php8.3-xdebug

We have since the change no longer seen that issue. My guess: the switch to php-fpm did the trick.
Just in case that does not help - here our xdebug config of php-fpm php.ini:

```
[xdebug]
xdebug.mode = debug
xdebug.start_with_request = trigger
xdebug.client_host = 127.0.0.1
```

... and here the xdebug config for the php cli php.ini - all commented out:

```
;[xdebug]
;xdebug.mode = debug
;xdebug.start_with_request = yes
;xdebug.client_host = 127.0.0.1
;xdebug.client_port = 9003; default anyway for v3 of xdebug
;xdebug.log = "/tmp/xdebug.log"; can't be opened
```

 

Hope that helps!

Edited 3 hours ago by PapaKai