Remark42 is a commenting system that is self-hosted and open source. It supports Markdown and provides a number of features, including likes, upvotes, downvotes, and moderation. In this tutorial, we will describe how to install Remark42 on NixOS, the Linux distribution that is purely functional and declarative.
Before proceeding with the installation of Remark42, you will need to make sure you have the following prerequisites:
Remark42 requires a PostgreSQL database to store its data. To install and set up PostgreSQL on NixOS, follow these steps:
$ sudo nix-channel --update
$ sudo nix-env -i postgresql
$ sudo su - postgres -c 'initdb -D /var/lib/postgresql/data'
$ sudo systemctl start postgresql.service
$ sudo systemctl enable postgresql.service
$ sudo su - postgres
$ createuser -P remark42
$ createdb remark42
$ cd /home/user
$ git clone https://github.com/umputun/remark42.git
$ cd remark42
$ ./build.sh
./config/config.prod.yml
file:$ nano ./config/config.prod.yml
Here, replace the example PostgreSQL URL with the PostgreSQL user, password, and database name you created earlier.
$ ./run.sh build
$ ./run.sh web &
The Remark42 application should now be running.
In this tutorial, we have successfully installed and configured Remark42 on NixOS. With the PostgreSQL database set up and the Remark42 application running, you can now start using the commenting system on your website.
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