title: Installing PHP extensions on shared hosting
body: <p>I need to enable the <a href="http://au2.php.net/manual/en/book.mcrypt.php" rel="noreferrer">mcrypt</a> functions on my website, except I'm on a shared host (running linux) and obviously don't have access to the <code>php.ini</code> file. There does seem to be options for installing PEAR modules but a search told me mcrypt wasn't available. Is there any way I can do this, short of begging technical support to help me?</p>
  
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  <p>Update: Looking around a bit more, it looks like I might be able to use the <code>dl()</code> function to dynamically load a library at run time. Since I'm only using the mcrypt functions in one spot, I could probably get away with doing this since the performance hit (I assume there is a hit) should be minimal. The only problem now is how to get the <code>libmcrypt.so</code> file?</p>
  
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  <p>Another update: I've downloaded the libmcrypt.tar.bz2 file from Sourceforge and run <code>./configure</code>, <code>make</code>, and then copied the <code>libmcrypt.so.4.4.8</code> file into my home directory (as <code>libmcrypt.so</code>), but now I can't find where to put it so that the <code>dl()</code> function will find it.</p>