Haskell on a VPS

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John Van Enk

23 Jul 2009 23 Jul '09

10:53 a.m.

Has any one used a service similar to (or equivelant to) Slicehost or Linode to run Haskell network applications?

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Jeremy Shaw

23 Jul 23 Jul

11:08 a.m.

At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:53:40 -0400, John Van Enk wrote:

...

Has any one used a service similar to (or equivelant to) Slicehost or Linode to run Haskell network applications?

I have run happstack applications on vpslink and rimuhosting VPSes. (I build everything as .debs and then just install the .debs on the server. But that has nothing to do with the fact that I am using Haskell or a VPS, it's just how I roll...) Is there some reason you think running a Haskell network application would be different than any other network application when it comes to a VPS? - jeremy

John Van Enk

11:12 a.m.

No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times. Thanks. On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Jeremy Shaw wrote:

...

At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:53:40 -0400, John Van Enk wrote:

...
Has any one used a service similar to (or equivelant to) Slicehost or Linode to run Haskell network applications?

I have run happstack applications on vpslink and rimuhosting VPSes. (I build everything as .debs and then just install the .debs on the server. But that has nothing to do with the fact that I am using Haskell or a VPS, it's just how I roll...)

Is there some reason you think running a Haskell network application would be different than any other network application when it comes to a VPS?

- jeremy

Anton van Straaten

11:38 a.m.

John Van Enk wrote:

...

No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times.

One detail you should check is that the VPS has enough memory for the Haskell applications you intend to run. RAM tends to be the most constraining factor on cheaper VPSes, and Haskell apps aren't always the most lightweight users of RAM. (At least, mine aren't.) Anton

John Van Enk

11:40 a.m.

Yeah, it crossed my mind, but since my application only uses 3MB of memory in Linux, I think I'll be ok. :) On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Anton van Straaten wrote:

...

John Van Enk wrote:

...
No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times.

One detail you should check is that the VPS has enough memory for the Haskell applications you intend to run. RAM tends to be the most constraining factor on cheaper VPSes, and Haskell apps aren't always the most lightweight users of RAM. (At least, mine aren't.)

Anton _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Anton van Straaten

11:44 a.m.

3MB? You're going to host "Hello World" on a VPS? ;) John Van Enk wrote:

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Yeah, it crossed my mind, but since my application only uses 3MB of memory in Linux, I think I'll be ok. :)

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Anton van Straaten wrote:

...
John Van Enk wrote:

...
No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times. One detail you should check is that the VPS has enough memory for the Haskell applications you intend to run. RAM tends to be the most constraining factor on cheaper VPSes, and Haskell apps aren't always the most lightweight users of RAM. (At least, mine aren't.)

Anton _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

John Van Enk

11:46 a.m.

It's a synchronization node for my VPN application written in Haskell. All it has to do is catch UDP packets, and keep a teeny tiny amount of state. I just don't have the resources to host that my self in a reliable way. On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Anton van Straaten wrote:

...

3MB? You're going to host "Hello World" on a VPS? ;)

John Van Enk wrote:

...
Yeah, it crossed my mind, but since my application only uses 3MB of memory in Linux, I think I'll be ok. :)

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Anton van Straaten wrote:

...
John Van Enk wrote:

...
No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times.

One detail you should check is that the VPS has enough memory for the Haskell applications you intend to run. RAM tends to be the most constraining factor on cheaper VPSes, and Haskell apps aren't always the most lightweight users of RAM. (At least, mine aren't.)

Anton _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Bryan O'Sullivan

2:10 p.m.

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 8:12 AM, John Van Enk wrote:

...

No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times.

I don't know about typical VPS setups, but if your provider runs SELinux in enforcing mode, some Haskell code built with older versions of GHC will crash due to the way it uses trampolines. I believe that this is fixed in 6.10, but I haven't checked as SELinux is a blight that I always wipe out at the first opportunity.

Don Stewart

2:09 p.m.

bos:

...

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 8:12 AM, John Van Enk wrote:

No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times.

I don't know about typical VPS setups, but if your provider runs SELinux in enforcing mode, some Haskell code built with older versions of GHC will crash due to the way it uses trampolines. I believe that this is fixed in 6.10, but I haven't checked as SELinux is a blight that I always wipe out at the first opportunity.

Not trampolines, but adjustor thunks, no? The use of executable data. -- Don

Bit Connor

24 Jul 24 Jul

3:13 p.m.

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 6:12 PM, John Van Enk wrote:

...

No, I just want to know if there are any gotchas in the typical VPS setups that for some strange reason wouldn't like Haskell binaries. I couldn't think of any, but I miss details some times.

There used to be problems with ghci running under the virtualization software Xen on x86_64 which is a common setup for VPS. As far as I can tell these problems have been resolved. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2512 http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2063

Peter Robinson

23 Jul 23 Jul

2:35 p.m.

...

Has any one used a service similar to (or equivalent to) Slicehost or Linode to run Haskell network applications?

Since last year I've been using a VM at bytemark.co.uk as a remote development/testing machine. Never had a problem deploying Haskell webapps there, although compiling large packages like darcs might take a while due to swapping (256mb RAM). Peter

Jeremy Shaw

24 Jul 24 Jul

10:10 p.m.

At Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:53:40 -0400, John Van Enk wrote:

...

Has any one used a service similar to (or equivelant to) Slicehost or Linode to run Haskell network applications?

Ok, I discovered an issue with some VPSes. There are two virtualization technologies in common use, OpenVZ and Xen. With Xen you can have swap, but with OpenVZ you don't. In my experience, apps compiled with GHC like to allocate a lot of virtual memory that they don't really seem to use. With Xen that is not a big deal, if you allocate memory, but don't actually use it, that's ok, because in theory it could be swapped out if you actually did use it. But with OpenVZ, just allocating the memory counts against your memory quota, even if you aren't actually using it for anything. So, in practice, I think you will get a lot more milege out of your VPS memory if you use Xen instead of OpenVZ, even if you never *actually* swap to disk on the Xen platform. There is some more information here: http://hostingfu.com/article/xen-or-openvz - jeremy

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Anton van Straaten
Bit Connor
Bryan O'Sullivan
Don Stewart
Jeremy Shaw
John Van Enk
Peter Robinson

Haskell on a VPS

John Van Enk

Jeremy Shaw

John Van Enk

Anton van Straaten

John Van Enk

Anton van Straaten

John Van Enk

Bryan O'Sullivan

Don Stewart

Bit Connor

Peter Robinson

Jeremy Shaw

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