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Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting

by Anonymous Monk
on Mar 20, 2006 at 06:57 UTC ( [id://537888]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm new to Perl. I'm looking for a host that's very reliable. I seek the advice and help of those here much more experienced than I, please....

I've heard good things about pair.com being very realiable.

I found out from their pre-sales support that the version of Perl they offer is 5.8.3. This is on FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE boxes. Other versions of some software on their boxes are as follows:

Apache 1.3.29, PHP 4.3.10 and PHP5 as a CGI only. MySQL is 4.1.15.

I'm concerned about the fact Perl and some other software is not the latest current stable "production" versions.

I'm worried that I might run into problems learning Perl 5.8.8, then deploying my code (and related CPAN code) to a FreeBSD 4.8 box running Perl 5.8.3. Should I be worried? How woried? What are the likely problems or limits I might run into? What would be the minimum version of Perl you would want from a reliable host to avoid problems?

At this point I'm new to Perl, so "I don't know what I don't know". Pair.com has, as far as I can tell, an excellent reputation as a reliable host. But old versions of software make me wonder about security holes and other version related problems. I just don't know how much a difference or problem running on a FreeBSD 4.8 box with Perl 5.8.3 will be.

I'll likely have several websites. Most dynamic, using Perl to query a database. I want to experiment with different types of sites. Ideally, it would be nice to pick a host up front I will be happy "growing with".

I can't think of a more esteemed place to ask about this. Please enlighten me, please, please, please...as you are all much more wise to the ways of Perl than this humble novice.

Thank you!!

A humble Perl novice

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting
by friedo (Prior) on Mar 20, 2006 at 07:08 UTC
    I wouldn't be worried. Nearly everything on CPAN is targetted towards 5.6 and earlier, and huge numbers of people are running significantly older perls than that.
Re: Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting
by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 20, 2006 at 07:22 UTC

    My tip is - if your target is 5.8.3, then you best develop on 5.8.3 as well. There are no major differences between 5.8.3 and 5.8.8, but it makes things much more painless if you develop on the target platform already. If you're using a unixish OS for development, you can easily install the 5.8.3 release from backpan.perl.org - just make sure you install it into /opt/perl/5.8.3 - somewhere where it doesn't interfere with your system perl.

Re: Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting
by rinceWind (Monsignor) on Mar 20, 2006 at 10:05 UTC

    It's a quality of the Perl 5.8 stable branch that it's pretty darned stable. This is mainly due to the work put in by Nicholas Clark bringing the release management process under control.

    There's not been much functionality change between 5.8.3 and 5.8.8 - check the perldelta documents, and you'll find this is in areas not affecting your application - ymmv. The exception is in the handling of UTF-8; You may have issues if you need this functionality.

    --

    Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
    Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
    So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    (Missquoting Janis Joplin)

Re: Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting
by timos (Beadle) on Mar 20, 2006 at 07:14 UTC
    I would not worry about the perl Version, but MySQL, because 5.x definitly has some great features 4.x misses. Have you ever thought about a root-server so that you can run the software you like?
      Hi, I'm not qualified to be my own server admin. And a managed dedicated server would be too expensive right now.

      Ideally, a reseller account, making it easy to have lots of domains, would be ideal. But it's having my sites served up reliably (so my sites aren't down when googlebot comes calling) that's what's most important to me. Next is security, so I don't get embarrased by having my sites taken over by some miscreant. I've heard pair.com is one of the best in regards to reliability (not sure about security). I'm still working on my short list of host located in the USA to consider.

Re: Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting
by dws (Chancellor) on Mar 20, 2006 at 20:35 UTC
    Pair.com has, as far as I can tell, an excellent reputation as a reliable host. But old versions of software make me wonder about security holes and other version related problems.

    I've been a Pair.com customer for many years. It's been my experience that they lean slightly toward being conservative in what they install, but they do stay on top of security issues. There are less expensive places to go than Pair, but their stability and connectivity have been more than worth it for me. YMMV.

Re: Perl 5.8.3 and Pair.com hosting
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 21, 2006 at 18:00 UTC
    Thanks for the feedback. So it wounds like an older version of Perl will not be a problem. OK. Anything else I should look out for? Thanks!
      Yes. Look out for the NodeReaper ;-)


      holli, /regexed monk/

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