Tech Spot

In the world of web hosting, there's mainstream providers like Wix , GoDaddy , and SquareSpace , and then there's bottom dollar shared web hosting, which ranges from free to a few bucks a year. I was intrigued by a few Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2017 deals that offered cPanel shared hosting for $1 a year. That's only $0.08 a month! How can it be possible? I'm here to tell you that it's not, at least not without significant performance and downtime issues. Also, note that these deals may no longer be available. I gave them a try and also ended up on their marketing e-mail lists for their other products (this is their upsell game). You could wait until the next Black Friday event, or sign up earlier if you need a plan sooner. Let's look at some uptime graphs I captured using StatusCake , which I highly recommend (I'm not affiliated with them, just a satisfied user). Here are the providers I compared, along with their price points. I'm not inc

Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian 8 "jessie" are still relatively popular, especially considering the Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS release that isn't considered end-of-life until April 2019. Many low-end VPS providers still have Ubuntu 14.04 as a common OS image. Of course I much prefer Ubuntu 16.04, but when that isn't an option, you have to make do. These two resources helped greatly, and I will quote them in case they disappear or I can't find them in the future: Install gcc-5 and g++-5 (from gcc 5 on ubuntu 14.04 ): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gcc-5 g++-5 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-5 60 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-5 Install CMake 3.x (from How to install cmake 3.2 on Ubuntu ): sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cmake

For anyone wondering if xmr-stak will compile on 32-bit Linux for Monero/Aeon CPU mining, the short answer is no. I spent considerable time trying to force it to work on an old Ubuntu 14.04 laptop as well as on a VPS. Two earlier hurdles were getting CMake 3+ and gcc-5/g++5 installed. Those can be added via Debian/Ubuntu ppa's (for those of you on 64-bit, check out Upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 / Debian 8 "jessie" with CMake 3.x, gcc-5, and g++-5 ), but then when you go to actually build xmr-stak, there's a funny Easter egg in the make output: In file included from /home/user/xmr-stak/xmrstak/backend/cpu/minethd.cpp:24:0: /home/user/xmr-stak/xmrstak/backend/cpu/crypto/cryptonight_aesni.h:36:2: error: #error You are trying to do a 32-bit build. This will all end in tears. I know it. #error You are trying to do a 32-bit build. This will all end in tears. I know it. There's somewhat of an alternative for those of you who still want to do some low-power CPU mining