Rhost MUSH Hosting?

[Lilli]

Anyone familiar with a hosting service that supports the requirements needed for compiling Rhost?

So far I've tried a few shells and learned by trial and error that they don't have all the requirements needed.
ie. dialog installed and the proper gcc, though I can probably get around that if I can figure out how to modify
rhost's makefile without using a script .. .CC?

My bad, mostly due to experience, but it's the best way to learn?

Asking for help is the other best way, soooooo.....

Ideally, I'd love to just be able to drop Rhost's install script in and have at it.

[faraday]

@Lilli I don't know anything about Rhost, but Digital Ocean offers full Linux VPN accounts with root access to install anything you want. Its prices are competitive with most MU hosts I've seen. I use it for my own MU hosting. Sign up with this referral link and you get a $10 credit to try it out - basically 1 month free. (full disclosure: I get a referral bonus if you sign up and end up sticking around for a few months)

GenesisMuds also supports a wide variety of MU* types, but they don't mention Rhost specifically. They do have gcc at least.

[Cirno]

@faraday said:

GenesisMuds also supports a wide variety of MU* types, but they don't mention Rhost specifically. They do have gcc at least.

lmfao @ the GeoCities-era web design here. What is this, a website for ants? It looks tiny even on my ancient desktop rig, with its 1280X1024 pleb resolution. It'd probably be the size of a notepad on those fancy 4K monitors everyone has these days.

It's like they haven't updated it in decades. As someone who is employed as a Website Manager, that setup is painful to look at.

[Lilli]

@faraday I have an account @ GenesisMuds. They don't have dialog and I don't have root. Their gcc isn't working the way I'd like, though they do offer several suggestions on how to help with that. I'm still working on it. My Linux is very rusty, but coming back.

Might be better for me to find a hardcoder interested in the project, but I am in no rush.

In either case, thank you for the suggestion. An account with root will still be better than one without...

Edit: FYI, referral link does not work.

[Staked]

@Cirno Ha. I thought GeoCities as well when I saw that site.

Looking at their prices you'd probably be better served going with Digital Ocean like Faraday mentioned, @Lilli. For a dollar more than their lowest priced plan you'd get a VPS to yourself where you can install whatever you need to.

[faraday]

@Lilli Fixed the referral link - thanks for the heads up. I've been pretty pleased with Digital Ocean so far; been using them for about 6 months or so. GenesisMuds website is indeed kind of laughable, but their service was solid. I used them for many years. The guy who runs it was always very helpful. But things could have changed - it's been a little while.

[Glitch]

I use digital ocean for my own stuff as well as for these forums. There's a how-to that has some info on setting up a MUX that might offer some hints, even if it doesn't necessarily apply to Rhost here.

[RnMissionRun]

GenesisMUDS was very approachable about installing stuff when I hosted with them. Have you asked them to install dialog? You might also be able to download the source and install it in your home directory (which won't need root access).

IIRC, the only problem with compiling stuff on their servers was the severe RAM constraints, which you can work around by adding an option to the Makefile to make GCC use less memory.

I'll add my voice to the others that have recommend Digital Ocean. For as little as $5/month you will get your own private Linux (or BSD, if that's how you roll) server with a static IP and root access so you can add any packages that you might need. It'll be just like your Digital Ocean shell, only you'll have control over the entire virtual server. It really is the best and cheapest option (at least, IMO) for hosting your own game.

[Lilli]

@RnMissionRun I looked over Digital Ocean briefly this morning before heading out to work, and saw the benefit to an extra $1 a month too.

As for Genesis. I suspect they would likely add anything reasonable if asked to. I'm trying not to mess with the Makefile directly.

Without dialog, and some suggested config changes, and going more manual on the compile, I think I am still running into low memory errors trying to compile.

Digital Oceans is just looking more and more appealing because of the extras. It's like.... want a Hershey bar or a Lindt chocolate?

My next dilemma would be choosing which OS to have installed, and should it be a cloud service. That's new to me (Cloud server).

I will pop into the Rhost Dev site and ask them about their recommendations.

[Glitch]

For OS, I suggest Ubuntu because of the large number of resources available online. Also, anything on digital ocean is a "cloud server" so I'm not sure what you mean there. You don't need anything special to run a game, their basic linux server will do.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@Lilli

Bit delayed, but hypothetically Rhost should compile cleanly on any unixy system.

There was a bug with latest ubuntu with our openssl identifier that would think openssl was installed when it really was not. Mind you, it doesn't require ssl at all, it just enables it if it detects it. It enabled it erroneously on newer ubuntu systems (14.04+ apparently).

It's been successfully compiled on all flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OSX Lion up to Yosemite (not tried the latest, anyone willing to give it a go?), Solaris, AIX, it used to work on HPUX, not tried since, like, the dawn of dinosaurs, and even got it working with CYGWIN on Windows (I still need to shower for that). Think someone got it working on a PS2 and rasberry pi for kicks, but I never saw it running so take with a grain of salt.

I know people on MUS*H (The PennMUSH dev site for those not in the know: gungnir.pennmush.org 4201) or on the Dev Asylum (The RhostMUSH dev site for those not in the know: iweb.localecho.net 4201) offer free hosting, some on local systems, some on raid-capable deduped systems.

They tend to host anything you want, Penn, Mux, LP, Circle, Smaug, Rhost, Diku, etc etc long as it likely won't be a security risk and eat the server while grunting like an alien hybrid. I'd just openly ask around, and you may be surprised on what servers are available for hosting.

As for requirements for Rhost, I've done my best to make sure they're as minimalistic as possible:

You need a ksh/bash/dash for a shell and standard unix tools (grep, awk, etc)
You need a compiler (gcc or clang)
You need libcrypt (which should be standard)
openssl dev packages (optional, skips digest/ssl if not found)
libpcre (optional, it uses it's on internal code if not found)
mysql (optional, ignores it if not enabled)
sqlite (optional, ignores it if not enabled)

And as it can integrate with external processes, binaries, and scripts, likely whatever else you may want to integrate with Rhost.

So, minimal needs, to whatever you want to throw at it I guess.

Good luck

--Ash

[Lilli]

@Ashen-Shugar I was missing the openssl dev packages. Had openssl itself, so guessing it treated it like I was good to go.

Thanks again for your help!

And for those compiling PennMUSH, you will need the libpcre dev libraries, not just pcre.

[Lithium]

I use Third Generation and I was able to compile RHOST there once in the past, but I don't currently use it so I don't know if things have changed.