Catching up on messages in the r/selfhosted Discord/Matrix groups got me thinking about documenting how I set my synapse instance should it be needed again in the future. This will be a shorter post and assumes that you already have Docker setup, if not check out the documentation here. We’ll also not be setting up a separate database instance with this and will instead to the included sqlite3. With that out of the way let’s get started!
Setting up the config
Before we start an instance we need to generate a config file and tweak a few things, here’s how to generate the config file.
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docker run -it --rm --mount type=volume,src=synapse-data,dst=/data -e SYNAPSE_SERVER_NAME=my.matrix.host -e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=yes matrixdotorg/synapse:latest generate
Now we’ll want to make a few tweaks to the config.
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nano /var/lib/docker/volumes/synapse-data/_data/homeserver.yaml
Here is a sample of my config below.
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# Configuration file for Synapse.
#
# This is a YAML file: see [1] for a quick introduction. Note in particular
# that *indentation is important*: all the elements of a list or dictionary
# should have the same indentation.
#
# [1] https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/YAMLSyntax.html
#
# For more information on how to configure Synapse, including a complete accounting of
# each option, go to docs/usage/configuration/config_documentation.md or
# https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/usage/configuration/config_documentation.html
server_name: "matrix.my-domain.com"
pid_file: /data/homeserver.pid
public_baseurl: https://matrix.my-domain.com/
presence:
enabled: true
allow_public_rooms_over_federation: true
enable_search: true
enable_metrics: true
listeners:
- port: 8008
tls: false
type: http
x_forwarded: true
#bind_addresses: ['127.0.0.1', '0.0.0.0']
resources:
- names: [client, federation, metrics]
compress: false
# - port: 9000
# type: metrics
# bind_addresses: ['127.0.0.1', '0.0.0.0']
database:
name: sqlite3
args:
database: /data/homeserver.db
log_config: "/data/matrix.my-domain.log.config"
media_store_path: /data/media_store
enable_registration: true
registrations_require_3pid:
- email
report_stats: false
registration_shared_secret: "base64 key"
report_stats: false
macaroon_secret_key: "base-64 key"
form_secret: "base64 key"
signing_key_path: "/data/my-domain.signing.key"
trusted_key_servers:
- server_name: "matrix.org"
email:
smtp_host:
smtp_port: 587
smtp_user:
smtp_pass:
require_transport_security: true
notif_from: "Your Friendly %(app)s homeserver <[email protected]>"
app_name: my-domain
invite_client_location: https://app.element.io
supress_key_server_warning: true
If you’d like to see more config options you can check out the documentation here
Starting Synapse server
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docker run -d --restart unless-stopped --name synapse --mount type=volume,src=synapse-data,dst=/data -p 8008:8008 -p 443:443 matrixdotorg/synapse
Configuring NPM(Nginx Proxy Manager)
If you’re using NPM, like me, there are a few extra settings we need to change to ensure federation works and block metrics to the outside, on the proxy host for your matrix instance go to the advances tab and paste in the following
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add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
location /.well-known/matrix/server {
return 200 '{"m.server": "matrix.saltyoldgeek.com:443"}';
default_type application/json;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
}
location /_synapse/metrics{
try_files $uri = 404;
}
If you’re using Cloudflare Tunnels check out this post
Testing and connection
You should be set to go now, to see if things are running you can browse to http://matrix-my-domain.org or http://docker-machine-ip:8008 and you should see a Matrix welcome page. Now you should be able to with a client like Element, be sure to edit the server address to point to your instance and register a user.
Updating
To upgrade this instance follow the below commands, it will temporarily stop the service during the update.
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docker pull matrixdotorg/synapse
docker stop synapse
docker rm synapse
docker run -d --restart unless-stopped --name synapse --mount type=volume,src=synapse-data,dst=/data -p 8008:8008 -p 443:443 matrixdotorg/synapse
We’re done
If all worked you should be up and running, you can check out the full documentation here. In a future post, I’ll be going through setting up the Matrix Admin panel and hosting your own Element instance. Till then fair winds and following seas!