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How to Install Remark42 on NixOS

Introduction

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.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the installation of Remark42, you will need to make sure you have the following prerequisites:

• NixOS Latest
• A root access or a user with sudo privileges

Step 1: Install and set up PostgreSQL

Remark42 requires a PostgreSQL database to store its data. To install and set up PostgreSQL on NixOS, follow these steps:

1. Update the package list with the following command:

$ sudo nix-channel --update

2. Install the PostgreSQL package:

$ sudo nix-env -i postgresql

3. Now, initialize the database cluster:

$ sudo su - postgres -c 'initdb -D /var/lib/postgresql/data'

4. Start the PostgreSQL server:

$ sudo systemctl start postgresql.service

5. Enable the PostgreSQL service to start at boot:

$ sudo systemctl enable postgresql.service

6. Create a new PostgreSQL role and database:

$ sudo su - postgres
$ createuser -P remark42
$ createdb remark42

Step 2: Install Remark42

1. Move to the directory where you want to install Remark42:

$ cd /home/user

2. Clone the Remark42 repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/umputun/remark42.git

3. Generate the configuration file:

$ cd remark42
$ ./build.sh

4. Now, configure the Remark42 application by editing the ./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.

5. Build the Remark42 application:

$ ./run.sh build
$ ./run.sh web &

The Remark42 application should now be running.

Conclusion

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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