Install on MyDevil (shared hosting)

MyDevil.net is a Polish shared-hosting provider with PHP 8.4, PostgreSQL, Node.js, cron and SSH, on FreeBSD, without Docker and without root. This page says which parts of ulams fit there. The runbook and the scripts are in deploy/mydevil/; the decision is ADR 0091.

Surveyed, not installed

Estimate A read-only survey of a real MD2 account (server s51, FreeBSD 14.3) confirmed the facts in the next section, but ulams has not been installed there. The rest comes from MyDevil’s public documentation and the ulams code, and the unknowns are marked to confirm in the runbook. For production with real learners, the VPS variant or one server with Docker is the tested direction.

The short answer

The API with PostgreSQL fits, as a small deployment (a few tenants, light video use), with cron instead of long-lived workers and Cloudflare in front for DNS, TLS, wildcards and the front end. The learner front, admin, H5P and video do not fit well. MyDevil is a cheap place to run the API for a pilot, not a platform for many tenants.

What a real account offers

Verified by a read-only survey of an MD2 account on 2026-10-09:

Item	Value
OS	FreeBSD 14.3
Limits	4 GB memory, 70 processes, 3000 open files, no disk quota shown (MD2 is 50 GB)
PHP	5.6 to 8.5; php84 has pdo_pgsql, redis, imagick, gd, intl, zip, bcmath, sodium, pcntl, posix, apcu, mbstring, OPcache, exif; disable_functions empty
PostgreSQL	16.10 on a shared server, databases made with devil pgsql. ulams targets 12 to 17 and uses nothing version-specific, and a full migration on a fresh PostgreSQL 16.15 passes; the whole test suite has not been run on 16
Node	16 to 26, default 22.22 (the services need 22.12 or later)
Tools	redis-server, ffmpeg, ffprobe, screen, tmux, flock, rsync, git, curl, pg_dump
Network	outbound HTTPS to the Anthropic API works
Binexec, reserved ports	off, none: neither is needed for the plan here (cron, unix-socket Redis, Passenger sites)

Component by component

Component	Verdict	Why
Laravel 13 API on PHP 8.4	Works	PHP 8.4 per vhost (AddType application/x-httpd-php84 .php) and as php84 on the CLI; every extension ulams needs is present (verified)
PostgreSQL	Works with limits	devil pgsql db add; 16.10 (verified); databases “unlimited” in the offer; extensions per database (pg_trgm, unaccent, pgcrypto, vector, …). No CREATEDB for the app, so tenant databases are made by hand (ADR 0091)
Redis or Valkey	Works with limits	No managed service, not Valkey: you run the installed redis-server in screen, on a unix socket (no reserved port) or, for the H5P service, on a reserved loopback port (ULAMS_REDIS_PORT), with a password, restarted by cron after reboots; binexec is not needed (verified). Not needed for the API (database queue, file cache); needed only by the H5P service
Queue workers	Works with limits	Cron every minute runs ulams:tenant:work-once per domain; up to a minute of latency. screen workers are possible but each holds a process slot (70 in total) and nothing restarts them, so cron is the default
Builder and long-job queues (30 min, 5 h)	Works with limits, to confirm	A cron process under flock drains the queue and exits; whether the host kills a process that runs 30 minutes or 5 hours is not documented
Scheduler	Works	The same cron line runs one tick per domain (ulams:tenant:schedule-loop --once, which now also works without ext-pcntl); per-tenant schedules and the minute lock behave as in Docker
Node services: PDF	Works with limits	Node 22 and 24 under Phusion Passenger (devil www add <host> nodejs ...); stops after 24 h idle
Node service: H5P	Works with limits, defer	Needs Redis and the exported tenant config; GPL service; more memory than the API; a small VPS is safer
mjml	Works with limits	Same Node pattern, or a hosted mjml
Astro learner front (Node SSR)	Works for one to three tenants	One Passenger application (its own processes, 150 to 300 MB) per host name, so a wildcard of tenants does not fit in 70 processes; use Cloudflare Workers beyond three
Admin (static)	Better elsewhere	Static files per tenant host; Cloudflare serves all tenant hosts with one deployment
Wildcard subdomains	Not documented	Each host is a vhost (devil www add); wildcard names are not documented. Cloudflare holds the wildcard DNS and TLS
Custom and wildcard TLS	Works with limits	Let’s Encrypt per host with devil ssl (needs an unproxied record); own certificates per host with SNI (use a free Cloudflare Origin CA certificate). No wildcard issuance documented
ffmpeg (video)	Works with limits	ffmpeg and ffprobe are installed (verified); conversion is CPU-bound and shares the 70 processes and 4 GB
S3 / R2	Works	Outbound HTTPS from PHP; R2 needs TENANCY_S3_PUBLIC_READ_POLICY=false (R2 has no bucket policies)
Outbound network (Anthropic API)	Works	Verified for the Anthropic API; R2 and SMTP to confirm
HTTPS	Works	Cloudflare at the edge, Origin CA or Let’s Encrypt on the host

Multi-tenancy on MyDevil’s vhosts

Many domains pointing at one app directory works, with one vhost per host name. Every vhost (devil www add acme.api.example.com php) gets a document root; add-vhost.sh replaces it with a symlink to the shared ~/ulams/api/public, so one copy of the code serves every tenant. The app picks the tenant from the Host header: laravel-multidomain loads .env.<host> (written by ulams:tenant:create), and unknown hosts get a 404 (TENANCY_ENFORCE_HOSTS). Caddy’s host routing is replaced by: Cloudflare for the front, admin and content hosts, and MyDevil vhosts for the API hosts. Only the API host of a tenant lives on MyDevil, so one vhost is created per tenant.

Recommended split

Part	Where	Monthly cost (estimate)
API, PostgreSQL, cron workers	MyDevil	the plan you already pay: MD1 20 PLN, MD2 40 PLN, MD3 80 PLN, MD4 160 PLN a month, gross, list price (200/400/800/1600 PLN a year)
Learner front, admin, content-origin proxy	Cloudflare Workers / Pages	0 on the free tier; USD 5 on Workers Paid if you pass the free limits
Object storage	Cloudflare R2	0 up to 10 GB, then about USD 0.015 per GB-month; no egress fee
DNS, wildcard TLS at the edge	Cloudflare	0, but a wildcard at the second level (*.api.example.com) needs Advanced Certificate Manager, about USD 10, or flat host names
Domain	registrar	about USD 14 a year for .app
AI	Anthropic API	usage-based

Roughly 40 PLN a month for a pilot on the owner’s MD2 (plus Cloudflare at 0 to USD 5), plus the AI usage. The plan is already paid until 2026-12-18, so until then the extra cost is Cloudflare and the domain. Prices on the MyDevil offer page were read on 2026-10-09; a third-party listing shows half-price promotions, so check the price at renewal.

What you give up

• Limits. The surveyed MD2 has 4 GB of memory and 70 processes for the whole account, shared with the owner’s other sites; MyDevil does not publish per-plan limits (it sells extra RAM and processes as add-ons). The ulams containers assume 1 GB per PHP process and up to ten workers, so this variant runs cron passes one at a time and caps Passenger at one process per app. Memory budget for 3 to 6 tenants: about 2.5 GB at peak and 50 to 70 processes, so keep the fronts on Cloudflare past three tenants (see the resource plan in the runbook).
• No supervisor or root. Cron is the only dependable scheduler; a screen process is allowed but has no restart policy.
• Latency. Jobs wait up to a minute for the next cron pass; the default queue is not for real time.
• Large uploads and imports. SCORM packages up to 512 MB and course imports up to 1 GB go through PHP, which has request time and size limits on shared hosting.
• Video. One conversion at a time; heavy use will hit the process and CPU limits.
• No Docker. You build vendor/ on your machine or in CI and upload a tarball (deploy/mydevil/bin/build-release.sh); there is no docker compose pull.
• One server. No replicas, no failover; the backups are pg_dump files plus MyDevil’s own.
• Content origin. Caddy strips X-Ulams-Content-Origin from API requests; MyDevil’s nginx does not, so a Cloudflare Transform Rule must, or package HTML could run on the API origin. Treat the content origin as not ready until that rule and the content Worker exist.

Install in outline

The runbook is deploy/mydevil/README.md.

1. Run bin/check-host.sh on the account; make php point at php84 (binexec stays off unless something refuses to start).
2. Put the DNS zone on Cloudflare; add proxied records for the API hosts to the account’s web IP.
3. devil pgsql db add for the platform database; fill in .env from .env.example.
4. Build the tarball (build-release.sh), upload it, run install.sh then setup.sh.
5. crontab from deploy/mydevil/crontab (three queue groups, backup).
6. Create tenants with add-tenant.sh (database, vhost, ulams:tenant:create --db-password=).
7. Cloudflare: Origin CA certificate, Transform Rule for the content header, Workers for the front, admin and content hosts.

Upgrades are upgrade.sh <tarball> (backup, swap, ulams:upgrade, caches); see also Upgrades and Backups for what they mean in general, and DNS and TLS and Content origin for the hosts.

Code changes this variant needed

Done in the same change (tests included):

Change	Effort	What
ulams:tenant:work-once	S (done)	One scheduler tick and one queue drain per domain, for cron
schedule-loop --once without ext-pcntl	XS (done)	Signal handlers only in loop mode
TENANCY_DATABASE_PROVISIONER=manual, ulams:tenant:create --db-password	S (done)	The app checks the login to a database the operator made
TENANCY_S3_PUBLIC_READ_POLICY=false	XS (done)	Skip the bucket policy on R2
Health check without Redis	XS (done)	RedisCheck is registered only when the queue or cache uses Redis

Not done:

Change	Effort	What
Secret value for X-Ulams-Content-Origin (instead of 1), checked by the API	S	Removes the dependency on header stripping at the proxy; needs an ADR (content-origin security)
Direct-to-R2 browser uploads for large packages	L	Avoids PHP upload limits on shared hosting
Wildcard-aware vhost helper if MyDevil accepts *.host	XS	One devil www add instead of one per tenant
ffmpeg-less video fallback (external transcoder)	M	Video on hosts without ffmpeg

When to move to the VPS variant

Move when any of these happens: a limit above bites (memory kills, process caps, a 504 on an import), you need H5P or video, you have more than two or three active tenants, you need job latency under a minute, or you need replicas and failover. The VPS and Cloudflare variant keeps the Cloudflare side (front, R2, DNS) and replaces the host; the database dumps from backup.sh restore into any PostgreSQL, and the tenant env files, Passport keys and APP_KEY move as they are.

Sources

MyDevil: offer, technologies, terms and limits annex, and the wiki pages PHP, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Cron, Redis, SSL, websites, Binexec, ports.

A staging install, step by step lessons

The runbook was run on a real account (2026-10-09; deploy/mydevil/STAGING-NOTES.md lists every object and how to remove it). What you need to know before you start:

• Use flat host names ({slug}-staging-api.example.com): every host is its own devil www site and Cloudflare’s free Universal SSL covers one level. The tenancy patterns, ULAMS_TENANT_HOSTS and REACT_APP_TENANT_API_HOST_PATTERN accept them as they are.
• Database names are cut at 16 characters including the account prefix: use TENANCY_DATABASE=<prefix>_u_{slug}.
• The cache is CACHE_DRIVER=file (there is no cache table).
• The /h5p/* path of every API host is a Cloudflare Worker route to the H5P site (a MyDevil host is PHP or Node).
• Sharp has no FreeBSD binary: build the Astro front with ULAMS_IMAGE_SERVICE=noop so /_image returns the original.
• The tenant bucket is created by hand in R2 when the server token is limited to the staging buckets.