Fediversity/matrix

Table of Contents

• A complete Matrix installation
• Overview
• Overview
• Synapse
• PostgreSQL
• nginx
• Element Call
• Element Web
• TURN
• Draupnir

A complete Matrix installation

This documentation describes how to build a complete Matrix environment with all bells and whistles. Not just the Synapse server, but (almost) every bit you want.

The main focus will be on the server itself, Synapse, but there's a lot more than just that.

Overview

A complete Matrix environment consists of many parts. Other than the Matrix server itself (Synapse) there are all kinds of other things that we need:

• Synapse
• Webclient (Element Web)
• Element Call for audio/video conferencing
• Management with Synapse-Admin
• Moderation with Draupnir
• Consent tracking
• Authentication via OpenID (later)
• Several bridges (later)

Overview

This documentation aims to describe the installation of a complete Matrix platform, with all bells and whistles. Several components are involved and finishing the installation of one can be necessary for the installation of the next.

Before you start, make sure you take a look at the checklist.

These are the components we're going to use:

Synapse

This is the core component: the Matrix server itself, you should probably install this first.

Because not every usecase is the same, we'll describe two different architectures:

** Monolithic

This is the default way of installing Synapse, this is suitable for scenarios with not too many users, and, importantly, users do not join many very crowded rooms.

** Worker-based

For servers that get a bigger load, for example those that host users that use many big rooms, we'll describe how to process that higher load by distributing it over workers.

PostgreSQL

This is the database Synapse uses. This should be the first thing you install after Synapse, and once you're done, reconfigure the default Synapse install to use PostgreSQL.

If you have already added stuff to the SQLite database that Synapse installs by default that you don't want to lose: here's how to migrate from SQLite to PostgreSQL.

nginx

We need a webserver for several things, see how to configure nginx here.

If you install this, make sure to check which certificates you need, fix the DNS entries and probably keep TTL for for those entries very low until after the installation, when you know everything's working.

Element Call

Element Call is the new way to have audio and video conferences, both one-on-one and with groups. This does not use Jitsi and keeps E2EE intact. See how to setup and configure it.

Element Web

This is the fully-fledged web client, which is very easy to set up.

TURN

We may need a TURN server, and we'll use coturn for that.

It's apparently also possible to use the built-in TURN server in Livekit, which we'll use if we use Element Call. It's either/or, so make sure you pick the right approach.

You could possibly use both coturn and LiveKit, if you insist on being able to use both legacy and Element Call functionality. This is not documented here yet.

Draupnir

With Draupnir you can do moderation. It requires a few changes to both Synapse and nginx, here's how to install and configure Draupnir.