Installing Ocaml via SSH

[edwinbradford]

Hi Hawk Host,

I have SSH up and running fine now via Putty on Windows, cool. I'm following a guide here on how to install Unison, a backup and sync tool I've been using locally. The first part works fine

$ curl -O http://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-3.10/ocaml-3.10.1.tar.bz2

$ tar jxvf ocaml-3.10.1.tar.bz2

$ cd ocaml-3.10.1

but it falters when I get to the line

$ ./configure -prefix ~

The returned output is

Configuring for a x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu ...

gcc found

Unable to compile the test program.

Make sure the C compiler gcc -O  is properly installed.

I posted more info at linuxquestions.org but haven't had a response yet so thought I'd try you guys in case you know straight away what the reason is or have some protection enabled that would stop this from working.

Very grateful for any ideas.

[Brian]

By default we don't provide access to a compiler (like gcc) so that's why it's failing. Please submit a ticket at https://support.hawkhost.com or email our support department asking for access and cite this thread (so we know why you need it) and we can get that straightened out

[edwinbradford]

I never cease to be amazed at how helpful you guys are OK that was the problem, sorry, I've never compiled before, yet alone on a remote server so couldn't tell where the problem lay. I just submitted a ticket referencing this thread, thanks Brian, hopefully I can get it working now.

[edwinbradford]

OK that was fixed straight away via a support ticket as expected

Next I ran OCaml and got an out of memory error message:

Fatal error: out of memory

I posted on the Unison User Group (don't know if you need a login there) and had some really helpful feedback, the gist is they're saying its common for web hosts to limit memory and suggested running:

ulimit -v

or

ulimit -m

...which returned 200,000 (200MB) so I'm guessing that's the cause of the error.

Can you let me know if that memory cap can be released but I'm assuming not. In which case they've suggested I run a virtual machine and compile locally then just upload the pre-compiled binary. Which CentOS release version are you running, I inadvertently came across the Hawk Host blog and I think its CentOS 5 but I might as well get the release iteration 5.x.

Thanks guys.

[Tony]

The memory limit cannot be changed. We run CentOS 5.4 right now and it's a safe assumption in the future if there is a new 5.x release we'll be running it.

[edwinbradford]

No problemo guys, I anticipated that so I went ahead and downloaded VirtualBox and *just* finished compiling Unison locally, phew. Halfway there.