Isso is an open-source and lightweight commenting server, which is an excellent alternative to Disqus. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Isso on the latest version of Clear Linux.
Before we start with the installation, make sure you have the following prerequisites:
First, we need to install the necessary packages to set up Isso.
sudo swupd bundle-add curl git
sudo swupd bundle-add devpkg-libyaml
sudo swupd bundle-add devpkg-python
sudo pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
Next, clone the latest Isso repository to your system with the following command:
sudo git clone https://github.com/posativ/isso.git /opt/isso
After cloning the repository, navigate to the isso directory and use pip to install the isso package:
cd /opt/isso
sudo pip install isso
Before running Isso, we need to configure a few settings.
Create a new configuration file with the following commands:
sudo cp /opt/isso/config/isso.conf.sample /etc/isso.conf
sudo chmod 644 /etc/isso.conf
Open the /etc/isso.conf file with your editor and customize the settings as per your needs. Here's an example configuration file:
[general]
dbpath = /opt/isso/db/comments.db
host = http://localhost:8080/
max-age = 15m
proxy-mode = false
[server]
listen = http://localhost:8282/
workers = 4
[guard]
enabled = false
ratelimit = 2
direct-reply = 4
[math]
font-size = 16px
font-family = Times New Roman, serif
limit = 10
nofollow = true
[email]
from = isso@domain.com
smtp-host = localhost
smtp-port = 25
username =
password =
timeout = 3s
ssl = false
starttls = false
Save and close the file when done.
Now let's set up the Isso service to start at boot time. Create a new systemd service file /etc/systemd/system/isso.service with the following settings:
[Unit]
Description=isso Server
[Service]
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /opt/isso/bin/isso -c /etc/isso.conf run
KillMode=process
Restart=always
RestartSec=5s
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Save and close the file when done.
Reload the systemd daemon with the following command so that it can recognize the new service:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Enable the Isso service by running the following command:
sudo systemctl enable --now isso
Check the status of the service to ensure that it's running correctly:
sudo systemctl status isso
By default, Clear Linux blocks all incoming traffic, so we need to open the required ports for Isso to function correctly. We can use the firewalld command to configure the firewall:
sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=8282/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Finally, check the Isso server's functionality by accessing the web interface from a browser. Navigate to http://your-server-ip:8282 to see if the server is running correctly.
In this tutorial, we showed you how to install and configure Isso on Clear Linux latest. You can now use Isso to provide commenting features on your website or blog.
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