matrix/synapse

Table of Contents

• Installation and configuration of Synapse
• Database
• Logging

Installation and configuration of Synapse

Mind you: this an installation on Debian Linux (at least for now).

Start by installing the latest Synapse server, see the upstream documentation.

apt install -y lsb-release wget apt-transport-https build-essential python3-dev libffi-dev \
               python3-pip python3-setuptools sqlite3 \
               libssl-dev virtualenv libjpeg-dev libxslt1-dev libicu-dev

wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.matrix.org/debian/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.matrix.org/debian/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" |
    tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/matrix-org.list

apt update
apt install matrix-synapse-py3

This leaves a very basic configuration in /etc/matrix-synapse/homeserver.yaml and two settings under /etc/conf.d. All other configuration items will also be configured with yaml-files in this directory.

Configure the domain you with to use in /etc/matrix-synapse/conf.d/server_name.yaml. What you configure here will also be the global part of your Matrix handles (the part after the colon).

You now have a standard Matrix server that uses sqlite. You really don't want to use this in production, so probably want to replace this with PostgreSQL.

There are two different ways to configure Synapse, documented here:

• Monolithic
• Workers

We'll use Synapse, using the workers architecture to make it scalable, flexible and reusable.

Database

The default installation leaves you with an sqlite3 database. Nice for experimenting, but unsuitable for a production environment.

Here's how you setup PostgreSQL.

Once you've created a database and user in PostgreSQL, you configure Synapse to use it.

First delete (or comment out) the SQLITE datbase in homeserver.yaml:

#database:
#  name: sqlite3
#  args:
#    database: /var/lib/matrix-synapse/homeserver.db

Then create the database configuration for PostgreSQL in conf.d/database.yaml:

database:
  name: psycopg2
  args:
    user: synapse
    password: <password>
    dbname: synapse
    host: /var/run/postgresql
    cp_min: 5
    cp_max: 10

Note: you configure the directory where the UNIX socket file lives, not the actual file.

Of course, if you use localhost, you should configure it like this:

    host: localhost
    port: 5432

After changing the database, restart Synapse and check whether it can connect and create the tables it needs.

Logging

Logging is configured in log.yaml. Some logging should go to systemd, the more specific logging to Synapse's own logfile(s).