Linux Shell Host – What are my options?

phpwebhosting.com is a great choice for a Linux shell host. After you sign-up, put in a request for ssh and it will be enabled quickly (all new accounts need to be verified). All common unix shell tools are pre-installed and, best of all, the admins will install more for you on request. You also have compiler access so are free to do any custom installs into your account space.

Your account is a normal unix shell – no restricted shells here. subversion and git are both available for revision control. Background processes are allowed as long as they do not cause a problem for other users. Crontab is also available.

Do you allow background processes?

Question:

Do your shells support background processes?

Answer:

Hi,

It depends on what you need to run. In general we do not allow background processes. We do not restrict background processes but we also do not encourage them. The goal is to keep our servers stable and running smoothly.

If you need something to run in the background it will run. We cannot guarantee a process will run forever though. We have a monitor that will kill things off after a certain amount of cpu time has been used up.

Also, no irc bots, bouncers, etc. are allowed at all.

So if you really, really need background processes we are probably not for you. If you just need to spawn things every once in a while or experiment with small servers you’ve wrote it should be ok.

I hope this helps some!

Can I run a server process?

Question:

Do you allow us to run a web server application i.e a server process (multithreaded). My application is an online pdf generator. My traffic is going to be very less i.e it is for private use.

Answer:

These types of question are hard to answer because it can depend so much from case to case. In general we recommend that
you try the app out and see if you hear from us. If there is a problem we will disable the app and let you know. In most cases it is fine.

There are a few server processes that we do not allow: bnc, bots, etc. – anything IRC related (sorry but cause of many problems) .

Do you support PayFlow Pro?

Question:

I am currently trying to get an ecommerce site hosted for a client of ours.

Our current host will not allow us to install Verisign’s Payflow Pro SDK on our account, and their support people are not very helpful.

Can you guys help?

Answer:

I think what you need would work out with our hosting.

We do not have a pre-installed global Payflow Pro install. However you are welcome to install it into your account space. We do not have any support for this but I believe other users have done so and gotten it working.

You are welcome to sign-up and give it a try. You can cancel service in the first 30 days and get a full refund if things don’t work out as needed.

multiple domains and url masking

Question:

I own two other domains that are registered with a different hosting company. I want to transfer the domains here and point them to a subdirectory.

I also want domain masking so when my users type www.second_domain.com into the browser they see www.second_domain.com when the page loads, not www.my_primary_domain.com/second_domain

Is this possible and how much will it cost?

Thanks!

Answer:

Hi,

There is no extra cost (as long as these are not high traffic sites – if they are, you’ll need to make a seperate account for them).

Just go to the domain section of the control panel and follow the extra domains list.

You can add the extra domains there and point them to the directory of your choice.

They will resolve totally independent of your primary domain.

Let us know if you need more help!

I want to do some advanced things with my incoming mail – what are the restrictions? Explain your shell mail options more.

Question:

Are you familiar with hypermail? It is an archiving program. It takes email and puts it in a convenient html archive. What hypermail purportedly does is take mail from mbox and put it in the archive. It can’t be too complicated or difficult to configure and install. Do you know anything about it? Would it work on your servers?

Answer :

I am not very familiar with hypermail, but from what you describe the biggest problem would be that our mail server software (qmail – qmail.org) puts the messages in maildirs.

Another problem is that the maildirs are only accessible by the special user vpopmail. You can forward select addresses to your Linux shell mail account (your_username@your_server.phpwebhosting.com) and have direct access to the maildirs there to convert them to mbox format. However this becomes complicated and we are unable to provide technical support for it.

I would say the bottom line would be that if you enjoy messing with things a bit, you would be able to make it work. If you want it to just work right away, I would advise against it.

Underneath the control panel we attempt to provide as pure of a Linux shell account experience as we can. If you like developing in that environment then you can probably make what you want to work happen. However you would be on your own. We only are able to provide official support for the email configuration in the control panel (having said that, I personally send all my mail to the shell and read/manage my mail in a mbox-format with a shell mail reader – so it is possible).

I hope this has helped.

Can I control php’s register globals option?

Question:

Hi there. I am taking up web design and was wondering something: Is REGISTER_GLOBALS turned on or off? I hope you can help me with this and thank you for your time!

Answer:

Hi,

Thanks for contacting us!

You can have register_globals turned on or off for your site depending upon your needs. It is best to keep it turned off, but some older applications still require it be turned on so you have that option too.

The php website has more information about register globals at :

http://www.php.net/register_globals

Please let me know if you need anything else!