Need full search text on a shared hosting web site using 8.1.x

Raymond Rodgers <sinful622@gmail.com> writes:

I just signed up for web hosting with HostNine which offers PostgreSQL
8.1.x, which doesn't have the full text search support in the default
installl. I requested that they run the tsearch2.sql from the contributed
files on the server to provide me with those capabilities since I don't have
super user access to the database server, but they just denied my request.

If they don't sell what you want to buy (ie, access to a reasonably
modern version of Postgres), go where they do sell it.

regards, tom lane

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Raymond Rodgers <sinful622@gmail.com> writes:

I just signed up for web hosting with HostNine which offers PostgreSQL
8.1.x, which doesn't have the full text search support in the default
installl. I requested that they run the tsearch2.sql from the contributed
files on the server to provide me with those capabilities since I don't

have

super user access to the database server, but they just denied my

request.

If they don't sell what you want to buy (ie, access to a reasonably
modern version of Postgres), go where they do sell it.

regards, tom lane

Aside from this issue, they're the best I've found for the least amount of
money in terms of bandwidth, disk space, and PostgreSQL support. I'd happily
continue to use my current, more expensive, hosting provider if they weren't
phasing out support for compiling your own applications with their system,
which means that I'll be losing PostgreSQL support because they only support
MySQL officially.

I went through the list of the hosting providers on the PostgreSQL site, and
while the old adage "you get what you pay for" might be applicable in this
instance, they were the only one that I could really afford at this point in
time.

Raymond

Raymond Rodgers wrote:

I just signed up for web hosting with HostNine which offers PostgreSQL
8.1.x, which doesn't have the full text search support in the default
installl. I requested that they run the tsearch2.sql from the
contributed files on the server to provide me with those capabilities
since I don't have super user access to the database server, but they
just denied my request. Are there any work arounds to provide this
support or something similar within PostgreSQL? I'd hate to have to
cobble together an inferior basic search capability in PHP if I didn't
have to...

can't you install the contrib module as a regular database user into the
database you own?

John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> writes:

can't you install the contrib module as a regular database user into the
database you own?

No, it would take superuser privs which he hasn't got. More, even with
superuser privs it would need the tsearch2.so library to be present on
disk, which it likely isn't if they aren't supporting contrib. And
(which is actually a somewhat legitimate reason for them to deny
support) it's fairly difficult to do anything useful with tsearch2
without the ability to write/edit its config files, which requires
outside-the-database filesystem access.

regards, tom lane

On Nov 16, 2009, at 2:12 PM, Raymond Rodgers wrote:

Aside from this issue, they're the best I've found for the least amount of money in terms of bandwidth, disk space, and PostgreSQL support. I'd happily continue to use my current, more expensive, hosting provider if they weren't phasing out support for compiling your own applications with their system, which means that I'll be losing PostgreSQL support because they only support MySQL officially.

I went through the list of the hosting providers on the PostgreSQL site, and while the old adage "you get what you pay for" might be applicable in this instance, they were the only one that I could really afford at this point in time.

a2hosting.com shows "unlimited" plans which include Postgres 8.4 (tsearch already included) for about $5/month. If you really need an older version, they might be willing to add your account to an older shared server. I know they used to have contrib tsearch installed with older versions.

http://www.a2hosting.com/services/web-hosting/

John DeSoi, Ph.D.

John DeSoi wrote:

On Nov 16, 2009, at 2:12 PM, Raymond Rodgers wrote:

a2hosting.com shows "unlimited" plans which include Postgres 8.4 (tsearch already included) for about $5/month. If you really need an older version, they might be willing to add your account to an older shared server. I know they used to have contrib tsearch installed with older versions.

http://www.a2hosting.com/services/web-hosting/

It's actually my preference to have a newer version, preferably at least
8.3.x. But at the time that I was doing my research (3-4 weeks ago), A2
didn't seem to have anything priced comparably to HostNine. Their
executive package is indeed a bit cheaper than HostNine, and I'm now
thinking about whether I'll brave the potential headaches of canceling
with HostNine. At the very least, if I do, I should have an easier time
moving my sites over: they're currently running on 8.3.x on my doomed
hosting account, and it was a pain in the hindquarters to move just a
single bare bones site on over to 8.1.x even without the full text
search....

Thanks for the tip!
Raymond