How to Install Remark42 on OpenBSD

Remark42 is a commenting system that can be integrated into any website. In this tutorial, we will see how to install it on OpenBSD.

Pre-requisites

Before we move forward, let's ensure we have the following:

• A running instance of OpenBSD
• A fully patched and updated installation of OpenBSD
• A web server installed and configured on OpenBSD

Installation Steps

1. Open the terminal of your OpenBSD instance.

2. Run the following command to install the Golang package:

   $ doas pkg_add go
   

3. Next, run the following command to clone the latest repo of Remark42:

   $ git clone https://github.com/umputun/remark.git
   

4. Navigate inside the cloned repository using the following command:

   $ cd remark
   

5. Run the following command to build the binaries:

   $ make build
   

6. Next, let's create a configuration file for Remark42. Run the following command to create a new file named remark42.yml:

   $ touch remark42.yml
   

7. Open the newly created remark42.yml file in your favorite editor (e.g., vim). Paste the following code and update the configuration values as per your requirements.

   http:
     port: 8080
   database:
     url: postgres://user:pass@localhost/remark?sslmode=disable
   default:
     forums:
       - name: The Default Remark42 Forum
         site_domain: example.com 
         enabled: true
         auth:
           google:
             clientID: "google client ID"
             clientSecret: "google client secret"
             enabled: true
   

   Note:

   • Update the port value with your web server listening port.
   • Replace user, pass, localhost, and remark with your Postgres database's actual credentials.
   • Update the name and site_domain fields in the default.forums section with your actual forum name and site domain name, respectively.
   • You may also need to update the google.clientID and google.clientSecret values in the default.forums.auth section.

8. Save and close the remark42.yml file.

9. Run the following command to start Remark42:

   $ ./remark -config ./remark42.yml
   

   After a few moments, Remark42 should start listening on the specified port.

Conclusion

That's it! You've successfully installed and configured Remark42 on your OpenBSD instance. You should be able to access it by navigating to the server's IP address with the specified port number (e.g., http://192.168.1.1:8080) in your web browser.

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