in reply to Installing PadWalker

shared hosting where I do not have access to compilers

The options of cross-compiling or building the module on a system that is similar enough to your hosting environment have been discussed before.

There are also other hosting providers that give you shared hosting with a compiler.

It also may be worth it to pick up the thought of switching to a VPS again. Yes, it's work, and having a system with root access does mean responsibility, but it's also a lot of freedom - the freedom you're currently lacking, and that is causing you extra work (getting XS modules installed).

Perhaps an intermediate step would be for you to set up a virtual machine on your local system that you can use to "practice" on, and this can also be your test system that mirrors the production system later on. You can get Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS here ("Manual server installation"), and getting it running inside a VM like VirtualBox is fairly easy.

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Re^2: Installing PadWalker
by Bod (Parson) on Mar 27, 2021 at 10:46 UTC
    It also may be worth it to pick up the thought of switching to a VPS again. Yes, it's work, and having a system with root access does mean responsibility, but it's also a lot of freedom

    Yes - it probably is...
    You have nailed the reasons why it hasn't happened yet. Work to migrate all the existing domains and tools that live on them, responsibility for having root access and being able to break things I don't understand and the learning curve needed to make it all happen.

    There are similarities to the refactoring I am currently doing - changing an entire site from hard coded to implementing Template. It was a bullet to bite, a learning curve and a fair degree of work but actually, I've found that templates are easier and quicker to create as well as being easier to maintain later on. The reason for refactoring to templates was to be able to implement AB testing into the core of the site but other benefits have been found for which I shall be eternally grateful to The Monastery.

    I plan to set up a Linux box at home and start using it for some of my everyday tasks - mostly as a learning resource. It's something that I have not got around to yet...

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      You have nailed the reasons why it hasn't happened yet. Work to migrate all the existing domains and tools that live on them, responsibility for having root access and being able to break things I don't understand and the learning curve needed to make it all happen.

      That's understandable of course.

      If you were to provide the information Corion asked for here, we could perhaps give some tips on how you could compile your modules on a different machine and then upload them to your hosting provider.

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      You could always just pay for hosting that provides what you need, rather than pay someone not to provide what you need.

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Re^2: Installing PadWalker
by Bod (Parson) on Mar 27, 2021 at 11:14 UTC

    Can you suggest how I can find out which flavour of *nix is running on the virtual server?

    I've tried: 

    cat /etc/os-release
lsb_release -a

    [download]
    They tell me that the file and command respectively do not exist.

    uname -r
10.0-962.3.2.lve1.5.39.el7.x86_64

    [download]
    Where else might I find more information so I can look into building a virtual machine or even a physical replica?

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[d/l]
[select]
      10.0-962.3.2.lve1.5.39.el7.x86_64

      I think that's RHEL7 or one of the many OSes based on it, like CentOS*. Perhaps your hosting provider's support would be willing to answer that question more precisely?

      Where else might I find more information so I can look into building a virtual machine or even a physical replica?

      I searched for "redhat linux virtualbox" on YouTube and found a bunch of video tutorials. (Just make sure to download stuff from the official pages only.)

      * Update: I see you just posted 11130454, which gives more hints: uname='linux buildfarm02.cloudlinux.com ...' suggests CloudLinux OS, a CentOS derivative.

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[d/l]

        That post also mentions RedHat and Fedora which I know are flavours of Linux...

        I recall someone suggested that shared hosting could be a hotchpotch of various bits and pieces that are shoehorned together in a non-standard way!

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      "Where else might I find more information so I can look into building a virtual machine or even a physical replica?"

      Ask the people that you pay for this service?

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