| .. | ||
| monolithic | ||
| workers | ||
| README.md | ||
Table of Contents
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). Also add the URL clients should connect to:
server_name: example.com
public_baseurl: https://matrix.example.com/
The public_baseurl will probably be different than the server_name, see
also Delegation and DNS.
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:
We'll use Synapse, using the workers architecture to make it scalable, flexible and reusable.
Listeners
A fresh installation configures one listener, for both client and federation traffic. This listens on port 8008 on localhost (IPv4 and IPv6) and does not do TLS:
listeners:
- port: 8008
tls: false
type: http
x_forwarded: true
bind_addresses: ['::1', '127.0.0.1']
resources:
- names: [client, federation]
compress: false
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.
Create admin
Synapse doesn't create an admin account at install time, so you'll have to do that yourself.
You need to set a registration_shared_secret for this, set that in
conf.d/keys.yaml like this:
registration_shared_secret: xxxx
You can create such a key by running pwgen -csn 52 1. Restart Synapse after
setting this key.
Now create an admin user. Login and issue this command:
register_new_matrix_user -u admin -a -c /etc/matrix-synapse/conf.d/keys.yaml
This will ask for a password, choose a safe one.
Logging
Logging is configured in log.yaml. Some logging should go to systemd, the
more specific logging to Synapse's own logfile(s).
This part is yet to be completed.
Delegation and DNS
If you run your server under a different FQDN than just the domain name you want to use, you need to delegate: point from your domain to the server.
Example. You want to use example.com for your domain, but your server is called matrix.example.com. To make that work, you need to serve 2 bits of JSON-code on example.com to point clients and servers to the correct machine: matrix.example.com.
Pointing servers to the correct server is done by publishing this bit of
JSON-code under https://example.com/.well-known/matrix/server:
{
"m.homeserver": {"base_url": "https://matrix.example.com"},
"org.matrix.msc3575.proxy": {"url": "https://matrix.example.com"}
}
Pointing clients to the correct server needs this at
https://example.com/.well-known/matrix/client:
{
"m.server": "matrix.example.com"
}
Very important: both names (example.com and matrix.example.com) must be A and/or AAAA records in DNS, not CNAME.
See nginx for details about how to publish this data.
Blacklists
You don't want Synapse to try to contact certain IP-addresses, especially not
those that are unroutable or for special uses. Add these addresses to ip_range_blacklist,
in conf.d/ip_range_blacklist.yaml:
ip_range_blacklist:
- '127.0.0.0/8'
- '10.0.0.0/8'
- '172.16.0.0/12'
- '192.168.0.0/16'
- '100.64.0.0/10'
- '192.0.0.0/24'
- '169.254.0.0/16'
- '192.88.99.0/24'
- '198.18.0.0/15'
- '192.0.2.0/24'
- '198.51.100.0/24'
- '203.0.113.0/24'
- '224.0.0.0/4'
- '::1/128'
- 'fe80::/10'
- 'fc00::/7'
- '2001:db8::/32'
- 'ff00::/8'
- 'fec0::/10'
You want to add addresses of malicious or otherwise unwanted machines to this list too. See Synapse's documentation for more information.
Synapse should probably be able to send out e-mails; notifications for those who want that, and password reset for those who need one.
You configure this under the section email (yes, really).
First of all, you need an SMTP-server that is configured to send e-mail for
your domain. Configuring that is out of scope, we'll assume we can use the
server smtp.example.com.
Configure this in conf.d/email.yaml:
email:
smtp_host: smtp.example.com
smtp_port: 465
smtp_user: matrix@example.com
smtp_pass: SuperSecretPassword
force_tls: true
notif_from: "Your Matrix server <matrix@example.com>"
This configures an SMTP-connection with SSL (port 465, force_tls). See Matrix'
email documentation
for more information.
Media store
Files and avatars need to be stored somewhere, we configure these options in
conf.d/mediastore.yaml:
media_store_path: /var/lib/matrix-synapse/media
enable_authenticated_media: true
max_upload_size: 50M
url_preview_enabled: true
url_preview_ip_range_blacklist:
- '127.0.0.0/8'
- '10.0.0.0/8'
- '172.16.0.0/12'
- '192.168.0.0/16'
- '100.64.0.0/10'
- '192.0.0.0/24'
- '169.254.0.0/16'
- '192.88.99.0/24'
- '198.18.0.0/15'
- '192.0.2.0/24'
- '198.51.100.0/24'
- '203.0.113.0/24'
- '224.0.0.0/4'
- '::1/128'
- 'fe80::/10'
- 'fc00::/7'
- '2001:db8::/32'
- 'ff00::/8'
- 'fec0::/10'
These are a few sane (?) defaults, check Matrix' documentation for many more options.
Homeserver blocking
This is a series of options that can be used to block and/or limit users. The whole list of options can be found in Matrix' documentation, we're going to pick out a few useful ones.
Let's configure these options in conf.d/homeserver_blocking.yaml.
admin_contact: matrixadmin@example.com
mau_stats_only: true
max_avatar_size: 2M
allowed_avatar_mimetypes:
- "image/png"
- "image/jpeg"
- "image/gif"
forgotten_room_retention_period: 7d
Authentication
Logging in can be done in basically two ways: an internal or external database. Let's start with the first: users and their passwords are stored in Synapse's database.
We use conf.d/signon.yaml to configure this stuff.
password_config:
policy:
enabled: true
localdb_enabled: true
pepper: CxDC6jU5FAxAcvD
minimum_length: 8
require_digit: true
require_symbol: true
require_lowercase: true
require_uppercase: true
With this bit, we configure Synapse to let users pick and change their own
passwords, as long as they meet the configured conditions. Mind you: pepper is
a secret random string that should NEVER be changed after initial setup.
But in a bigger environment you'll probably want to use some authentication backend, such as LDAP. LDAP is configured by means of a module (see Synapse LDAP auth Provider on Github).
Configuring Synapse to use LDAP, would be something like this:
password_config:
policy:
enabled: only_for_reauth
localdb_enabled: false
password_providers:
- module: "ldap_auth_provider.LdapAuthProvider"
config:
enabled: true
uri: "ldap://ldap.example.com:389"
start_tls: true
base: "ou=users,o=Example,dc=example,dc=com"
attributes:
uid: "uid"
mail: "email"
name: "givenName"
filter: "(&(objectClass=posixAccount)(accountStatus=active))"
This would connect to ldap.example.com over TLS, and authenticate users that
live under ou=users,o=Example,dc=example,dc=com and that are active Posix
accounts. Users will not be able to change their passwords via Matrix, they
have to do that in LDAP.
(this setup has not been tested, although it borrows heavily from the current ProcoliX setup).