Programming Tutorials

  You’ve just deployed a pristine Node.js application to your shared hosting environment. The upload finishes, you SSH into the server, run   npm start , and immediately hit a wall:   Illegal Instruction (core dumped)   or a cryptic V8 crash report. There are few things more frustrating in software engineering than code that works perfectly in development but fails at the binary level in production. On shared hosting providers like DreamHost, this is a common scenario when attempting to run Node.js v18, v20, or v22. This isn't a bug in your code. It is a fundamental mismatch between modern Node.js binaries and the underlying architecture of legacy shared hosting environments. Here is how to diagnose the root cause and implement a stable fix using NVM (Node Version Manager). The Root Cause: CPU Architecture and V8 Requirements To fix the error, you must understand what is happening inside the Node.js runtime. Node.js is built on top of Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. T...