How to Install Nullboard on OpenBSD

Nullboard is a lightweight web-based bulletin board system for Unix-like systems. It's a simple, easy-to-use solution for creating and maintaining message boards. This tutorial will guide you through the process of installing Nullboard on OpenBSD.

Prerequisites

Before installing Nullboard, you need to make sure that your system meets these prerequisites:

  • OpenBSD 6.2 or later version
  • A non-root user with sudo privileges
  • A web server such as Nginx or Apache
  • Git

Step 1: Install Dependencies

The first step is to install the dependencies required for running Nullboard. OpenBSD includes a package manager called pkg_add. To install the required dependencies, run the following command:

sudo pkg_add -I git go

Step 2: Clone Nullboard

Next, you need to clone the Nullboard repository from GitHub. Run the following command to clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/apankrat/nullboard.git

Step 3: Build and Install Nullboard

Once you have cloned the repository, change into the nullboard directory and build the binary:

cd nullboard
go build -o nullboard cmd/nullboard/*.go

After successfully building the binary, you can copy it to a directory that is included in the PATH environment variable:

sudo cp nullboard /usr/local/bin/

Step 4: Configure and Run Nullboard

To configure Nullboard, you need to create a configuration file. The configuration file is a TOML format file which defines various settings required for running Nullboard. Copy the sample configuration file and create a new configuration file:

cp config.sample.toml config.toml

Edit the config.toml file and update the configuration settings according to your requirements. You must set the root and build_dir settings in the configuration file.

vim config.toml

Once you have successfully configured Nullboard, you can start the Nullboard daemon (nullboardd) by running the following command:

nullboardd -c config.toml

By default, the Nullboard daemon listens on port 8080. You can change the port by modifying the listen option in the configuration file.

Step 5: Set Up your Web Server

Once Nullboard is running, you need to set up your web server to proxy requests to Nullboard. For example, if you are using Nginx as your web server, you can add the following configuration to your Nginx configuration file:

location /nullboard {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
}

This will proxy requests to /nullboard to Nullboard running on localhost:8080.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to install and run Nullboard on OpenBSD. Nullboard is a simple and easy-to-use bulletin board system. It's a great choice for creating online forums and discussion boards.