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Lisp and CGI or Fastcgi

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:29 pm
by janders468
Hello,

I am new at web development so I apologize ahead of time if I sound like a complete idiot. I am wondering if it is possible to configure a lisp on a hosted web site to run via cgi or preferably fastcgi. I have seen some documentation on the available options for fastcgi with clisp looking to be the most complete (?). I have successfully built clisp with the fastcgi module on the server, however I can't seem to get it to get anything to the browser. I guess I am not looking for specific answers because I'm too ignorant to ask specific questions, but my main concern is wondering if this is even possible given the restrictions I am given for the server (i.e. I have no root access). If any one has any ideas could you point me toward any documentation you know about, it seems pretty sparse as it's probably not a common setup.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Lisp and CGI or Fastcgi

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 4:44 am
by lnostdal
IMHO don't bother with shared hosting. It's nothing but hassle; wrong glibc version, wrong postgresql version, wrong some-other-library version, wrong apache/lighttpd/nginx/other-front-end config etc. etc..

VPS is dirt cheap and you get full root access:

http://prgmr.com/xen/

..there are many; the Xen based ones work well with Lisps. Then I'd go straight for a reverse proxy setup (mod_proxy using Apache, Lighttpd or Nginx) -- in particular I'd avoid things like mod_lisp as it is not needed.

Re: Lisp and CGI or Fastcgi

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:29 am
by janders468
Thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for and I think that going with a vps is a much better option now that I've looked into it. I agree reverse proxy is the way to go.

Re: Lisp and CGI or Fastcgi

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 8:11 am
by Kompottkin
If you're just setting up a very simple website with CGI, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET provides remarkably affordable hosting that includes a CLISP installation. I'm hosting my blog there (CGI + SQLite) and I'm very happy with the service.

Then again, being able to run a real server process in Lisp is, of course, superior, and it's probably the only sensible way of building a large, dynamic website.