tech questions before I signup

Hi, I have some questions related to some perl scripts I've written, and I want to know if I can move them over from my private server to this host.

1. I've developed some perl scripts that require a few modules readily available from cpan.org. Would dreamhost be able to install these modules in addition to the default perl setup?

2. Can I run scripts from any directory or am I limited to the cgi-bin?

3. One of my scripts calls an external program called Imagemagick (a graphics program). It can be found on many default linux installs. If it's not installed, would they be willing to install it?

4. I also use the external program sendmail to send out some emails from within one of my perl scripts. I understand that this won't be available with every hosting company, so would they happen to have an alternative method to send out emails that I can incorporate into my script?

Thanks

I guess some questions are best left for their sales/support to answer. Here's my attempt:

1. You might wish to ask DH's support to install those modules. However, (1) you have full shell access (2) you are free to install those in your account. So I guess it is easiest to just download them from CPAN yourself...

2. Yes, any directory. It runs with filename extension .cgi. Also all my Python files (.py) runs as CGI even though they aren't executable, I guess it might also apply to Perl (.pl) files.

3. Image Magick is already installed. 6.0.6 on my server.

4. They use Postfix on server boxes, and sendmail(1) is available on /usr/sbin/sendmail.

Thanks, I was going to email them, but I didn't know if their sales support handled tech questions.

On my system, I've written some modules which I usually store locally inside my user account. With modules I download from cpan.org, I install via root access to the perl libraries. And I do believe this is necessary for some modules.

Thanks for your help and I will shoot dreamhost an email.

In reply to:

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I also use the external program sendmail to send out some emails from within one of my perl scripts.

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Do these scripts send out a lot of emails? If so, you should be aware the DreamHost does have limits on the number of emails that can be sent from a particular account over a given time period, I believe the limit is around 100 per hour.

Mark

Hi, the scripts I wrote act together as a web forum. Users register to post on the forum, and I send them an email during the registration process. Imagemagick is used to create an image captcha for security reasons.

I guess I could limit the number of registration requests for each hour if necessary.

In reply to:

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Users register to post on the forum, and I send them an email during the registration process.

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I can't see this being a problem, unless the forum becomes extremely popular.

I am not sure, but I think I read that DreamHost will increase the limit on a case-by-case basis.

Unfortunately, such limits are a necessary evil in todays spam filled world. :(

Mark

Well the 100 limit seems to be enough. I think I should hard code the limit into my script just for added spam protection.

Just one last question. Is aspell installed on the servers? Thanks.

Just a minor clarification...the sendmail program is not really Sendmail, it's a Postfix to Sendmail compatibility interface. I 've used it to send mail and it works fine, but there may be some obscure Sendmail options that it does not support.

$ aspell -v
@(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.60.3-20050121)




--Matttail
art.googlies.net - personal website

Thanks for all your replies, I'm now just waiting DH's reply to the module situation.