Requirements

Please read this first: this page explains what you’ll need to self-host a Comentario instance.

If you’re interested in building Comentario from the source code, please refer to Building Comentario.

Database

Comentario requires a database for storing comments, users, domain configuration, user sessions etc.

At the time of writing, there are the following two options available: SQLite and PostgreSQL.

SQLite

SQLite is a file-based local storage mechanism that can simplify Comentario installation: the only thing you’ll need is to specify a location for the SQLite3 file.

This option has, however, a number of shortcomings:

• It’s not scalable: it will probably be okay for up to a few thousand comments, but beyond that the performance will degrade.
• It’s not secure: there’s no duty separation and no role-based access control, for example, if you want to appoint a DB administrator.
• It’s less reliable: in case of OS or system crash, the database may end up in a corrupt state.
• It’s not concurrent: you can’t look into the DB contents while Comentario is running.

That said, it’s probably fine to use SQLite as a minimal option to try out Comentario, or even to use it for your (low traffic) personal blog.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a dedicated database server, which provides a production-grade persistent storage for systems of any scale, from single-user to those hosting millions of comments.

It doesn’t matter where exactly this database is running — on the same machine, on another machine, in the cloud — as long as it’s reachable by the Comentario server.

An important thing to consider, however, is the round-trip time to the PostgreSQL server. Any network latency will negatively impact the overall server performance, so it’s a good idea to make sure the database network connection is as fast as possible.

Supported PostgreSQL versions

As of now, Comentario supports all PostgreSQL versions from 10 up, with 16.x being the latest available.

Please note, however, that it’s usually a good idea to use the latest available software version because of security updates and bug fixes; or, at least, the latest minor version of a major version, for the same reason.

Comentario server

The Comentario server, or the backend, currently supports the following architectures:

• linux_amd64 (Linux x86_64, 64-bit).
• linux_arm64 (Linux AArch64/ARMv8, 64-bit).
• linux_armv6 (Linux ARMv6, 32-bit).

Each of these architectures is built twice:

• Statically linked;
• Dynamically linked.

The above flavours are assembled into a number of binary packages and tarballs: see the Releases page for available artifacts.

The official Docker builds are based on Alpine Linux and contain a statically-linked linux_amd64 binary.

It’s also possible to run Comentario on a “full-fledged” Linux variant (such as Ubuntu or Fedora), as well as to link it dynamically against libc or musl (see Building Comentario).