Posted by: Oky
Posted on: 2007-10-30 03:09:00
Hi,
Does anyone know if Dreamhost allows you to spawn compiled executables from a script?
Also I would like to schedule a script to be ran periodically regardless of whether a page is requested. Does any if this is possible with Dreamhost?
Sorry if these are obvious question. I did have a look through the Wiki but could not find an answer.
Many thanks
Posted by: rlparker
Posted on: 2007-10-30 03:22:00
DreamHost allows you to run cron jobs, which should meet your needs in both described cases.
Check out the DreamHost WIki article on cron:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Cron
--rlparker
Posted by: Oky
Posted on: 2007-10-30 07:20:00
Thanks for your reply rlparker, cron looks ideal.
Do you know if there is a list of restriction DH places on running processes anywhere? It would be nice to know exactly what my process can and can't do.
In particularly, I would like to make outbound HTTP requests from a Python script but I am unsure if DH would allow this?
Thank again
Posted by: rlparker
Posted on: 2007-10-30 07:50:00
You're welcome! I don't know of a list of restrictions so to speak (other than those listed in the TOS), but there are guidelines that have to do with memory usage, CPU utilization, background processes (cron itself is a "background process"), persistent processes, etc.
You can find a lot of information about these things on the DreamHost Wiki (http://wiki.dreamhost.com).
Generally speaking, if your cron jobs play well with others and don't unduly burden the server or impact other users' ability to serve web pages, you should be ok.
Certainly, remote fetching of web pages over http is not prohibited if done in a reasonable manner (DreamHost has cURL, wget, and rsync available).
You are well advised to research this stuff a bit on the wiki, consider using "nice" to make your processes more sociable, and make every effort to be a good "shared-server citizen" to avoid problems.
DreamHost does have a procwatch program that will kill runaway or overly resource intensive processes to protect the server's stability and usefulness, but wiht proper planning and implementation you should be able to avoid ever encountering it. 
--rlparker