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Contents

Introduction

Matrix is an ambitious new ecosystem for open federated Instant Messaging and VoIP. The basics you need to know to get up and running are:

  • Everything in Matrix happens in a room. Rooms are distributed and do not exist on any single server. Rooms can be located using convenience aliases like #matrix:matrix.org or #test:localhost:8448.
  • Matrix user IDs look like @matthew:matrix.org (although in the future you will normally refer to yourself and others using a third party identifier (3PID): email address, phone number, etc rather than manipulating Matrix user IDs)

The overall architecture is:

client <----> homeserver <=====================> homeserver <----> client
       https://somewhere.org/_matrix      https://elsewhere.net/_matrix

#matrix:matrix.org is the official support room for Matrix, and can be accessed by any client from https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html or via IRC bridge at irc://irc.freenode.net/matrix.

Synapse is currently in rapid development, but as of version 0.5 we believe it is sufficiently stable to be run as an internet-facing service for real usage!

About Matrix

Matrix specifies a set of pragmatic RESTful HTTP JSON APIs as an open standard, which handle:

  • Creating and managing fully distributed chat rooms with no single points of control or failure
  • Eventually-consistent cryptographically secure synchronisation of room state across a global open network of federated servers and services
  • Sending and receiving extensible messages in a room with (optional) end-to-end encryption[1]
  • Inviting, joining, leaving, kicking, banning room members
  • Managing user accounts (registration, login, logout)
  • Using 3rd Party IDs (3PIDs) such as email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook accounts to authenticate, identify and discover users on Matrix.
  • Placing 1:1 VoIP and Video calls

These APIs are intended to be implemented on a wide range of servers, services and clients, letting developers build messaging and VoIP functionality on top of the entirely open Matrix ecosystem rather than using closed or proprietary solutions. The hope is for Matrix to act as the building blocks for a new generation of fully open and interoperable messaging and VoIP apps for the internet.

Synapse is a reference "homeserver" implementation of Matrix from the core development team at matrix.org, written in Python/Twisted. It is intended to showcase the concept of Matrix and let folks see the spec in the context of a codebase and let you run your own homeserver and generally help bootstrap the ecosystem.

In Matrix, every user runs one or more Matrix clients, which connect through to a Matrix homeserver. The homeserver stores all their personal chat history and user account information - much as a mail client connects through to an IMAP/SMTP server. Just like email, you can either run your own Matrix homeserver and control and own your own communications and history or use one hosted by someone else (e.g. matrix.org) - there is no single point of control or mandatory service provider in Matrix, unlike WhatsApp, Facebook, Hangouts, etc.

We'd like to invite you to join #matrix:matrix.org (via https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html), run a homeserver, take a look at the Matrix spec, and experiment with the APIs and Client SDKs.

Thanks for using Matrix!

[1] End-to-end encryption is currently in beta: blog post.

Synapse Installation

Synapse is the reference python/twisted Matrix homeserver implementation.

System requirements:

  • POSIX-compliant system (tested on Linux & OS X)
  • Python 2.7
  • At least 1GB of free RAM if you want to join large public rooms like #matrix:matrix.org

Installing from source

(Prebuilt packages are available for some platforms - see Platform-Specific Instructions.)

Synapse is written in python but some of the libraries it uses are written in C. So before we can install synapse itself we need a working C compiler and the header files for python C extensions.

Installing prerequisites on Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python2.7-dev libffi-dev \
                     python-pip python-setuptools sqlite3 \
                     libssl-dev python-virtualenv libjpeg-dev libxslt1-dev

Installing prerequisites on ArchLinux:

sudo pacman -S base-devel python2 python-pip \
               python-setuptools python-virtualenv sqlite3

Installing prerequisites on CentOS 7 or Fedora 25:

sudo yum install libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel libzip-devel freetype-devel \
                 lcms2-devel libwebp-devel tcl-devel tk-devel redhat-rpm-config \
                 python-virtualenv libffi-devel openssl-devel
sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

Installing prerequisites on Mac OS X:

xcode-select --install
sudo easy_install pip
sudo pip install virtualenv
brew install pkg-config libffi

Installing prerequisites on Raspbian:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python2.7-dev libffi-dev \
                     python-pip python-setuptools sqlite3 \
                     libssl-dev python-virtualenv libjpeg-dev
sudo pip install --upgrade pip
sudo pip install --upgrade ndg-httpsclient
sudo pip install --upgrade virtualenv

Installing prerequisites on openSUSE:

sudo zypper in -t pattern devel_basis
sudo zypper in python-pip python-setuptools sqlite3 python-virtualenv \
               python-devel libffi-devel libopenssl-devel libjpeg62-devel

Installing prerequisites on OpenBSD:

doas pkg_add python libffi py-pip py-setuptools sqlite3 py-virtualenv \
             libxslt

To install the synapse homeserver run:

virtualenv -p python2.7 ~/.synapse
source ~/.synapse/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tarball/master

This installs synapse, along with the libraries it uses, into a virtual environment under ~/.synapse. Feel free to pick a different directory if you prefer.

In case of problems, please see the Troubleshooting section below.

There is an offical synapse image available at https://hub.docker.com/r/matrixdotorg/synapse/tags/ which can be used with the docker-compose file available at contrib/docker. Further information on this including configuration options is available in contrib/docker/README.md.

Alternatively, Andreas Peters (previously Silvio Fricke) has contributed a Dockerfile to automate a synapse server in a single Docker image, at https://hub.docker.com/r/avhost/docker-matrix/tags/

Configuring synapse

Before you can start Synapse, you will need to generate a configuration file. To do this, run (in your virtualenv, as before):

cd ~/.synapse
python -m synapse.app.homeserver \
    --server-name my.domain.name \
    --config-path homeserver.yaml \
    --generate-config \
    --report-stats=[yes|no]

... substituting an appropriate value for --server-name. The server name determines the "domain" part of user-ids for users on your server: these will all be of the format @user:my.domain.name. It also determines how other matrix servers will reach yours for Federation. For a test configuration, set this to the hostname of your server. For a more production-ready setup, you will probably want to specify your domain (example.com) rather than a matrix-specific hostname here (in the same way that your email address is probably user@example.com rather than user@email.example.com) - but doing so may require more advanced setup - see Setting up Federation. Beware that the server name cannot be changed later.

This command will generate you a config file that you can then customise, but it will also generate a set of keys for you. These keys will allow your Home Server to identify itself to other Home Servers, so don't lose or delete them. It would be wise to back them up somewhere safe. (If, for whatever reason, you do need to change your Home Server's keys, you may find that other Home Servers have the old key cached. If you update the signing key, you should change the name of the key in the <server name>.signing.key file (the second word) to something different. See the spec for more information on key management.)

The default configuration exposes two HTTP ports: 8008 and 8448. Port 8008 is configured without TLS; it should be behind a reverse proxy for TLS/SSL termination on port 443 which in turn should be used for clients. Port 8448 is configured to use TLS with a self-signed certificate. If you would like to do initial test with a client without having to setup a reverse proxy, you can temporarly use another certificate. (Note that a self-signed certificate is fine for Federation). You can do so by changing tls_certificate_path, tls_private_key_path and tls_dh_params_path in homeserver.yaml; alternatively, you can use a reverse-proxy, but be sure to read Using a reverse proxy with Synapse when doing so.

Apart from port 8448 using TLS, both ports are the same in the default configuration.

Registering a user

You will need at least one user on your server in order to use a Matrix client. Users can be registered either via a Matrix client, or via a commandline script.

To get started, it is easiest to use the command line to register new users:

$ source ~/.synapse/bin/activate
$ synctl start # if not already running
$ register_new_matrix_user -c homeserver.yaml https://localhost:8448
New user localpart: erikj
Password:
Confirm password:
Make admin [no]:
Success!

This process uses a setting registration_shared_secret in homeserver.yaml, which is shared between Synapse itself and the register_new_matrix_user script. It doesn't matter what it is (a random value is generated by --generate-config), but it should be kept secret, as anyone with knowledge of it can register users on your server even if enable_registration is false.

Setting up a TURN server

For reliable VoIP calls to be routed via this homeserver, you MUST configure a TURN server. See docs/turn-howto.rst for details.

IPv6

As of Synapse 0.19 we finally support IPv6, many thanks to @kyrias and @glyph for providing PR #1696.

However, for federation to work on hosts with IPv6 DNS servers you must be running Twisted 17.1.0 or later - see https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/1002 for details. We can't make Synapse depend on Twisted 17.1 by default yet as it will break most older distributions (see https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/1909) so if you are using operating system dependencies you'll have to install your own Twisted 17.1 package via pip or backports etc.

If you're running in a virtualenv then pip should have installed the newest Twisted automatically, but if your virtualenv is old you will need to manually upgrade to a newer Twisted dependency via:

pip install Twisted>=17.1.0

Running Synapse

To actually run your new homeserver, pick a working directory for Synapse to run (e.g. ~/.synapse), and:

cd ~/.synapse
source ./bin/activate
synctl start

Connecting to Synapse from a client

The easiest way to try out your new Synapse installation is by connecting to it from a web client. The easiest option is probably the one at http://riot.im/app. You will need to specify a "Custom server" when you log on or register: set this to https://domain.tld if you setup a reverse proxy following the recommended setup, or https://localhost:8448 - remember to specify the port (:8448) if not :443 unless you changed the configuration. (Leave the identity server as the default - see Identity servers.)

If using port 8448 you will run into errors until you accept the self-signed certificate. You can easily do this by going to https://localhost:8448 directly with your browser and accept the presented certificate. You can then go back in your web client and proceed further.

If all goes well you should at least be able to log in, create a room, and start sending messages.

(The homeserver runs a web client by default at https://localhost:8448/, though as of the time of writing it is somewhat outdated and not really recommended - https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/1527).

Registering a new user from a client

By default, registration of new users via Matrix clients is disabled. To enable it, specify enable_registration: true in homeserver.yaml. (It is then recommended to also set up CAPTCHA - see docs/CAPTCHA_SETUP.rst.)

Once enable_registration is set to true, it is possible to register a user via riot.im or other Matrix clients.

Your new user name will be formed partly from the server_name (see Configuring synapse), and partly from a localpart you specify when you create the account. Your name will take the form of:

@localpart:my.domain.name

(pronounced "at localpart on my dot domain dot name").

As when logging in, you will need to specify a "Custom server". Specify your desired localpart in the 'User name' box.

Security Note

Matrix serves raw user generated data in some APIs - specifically the content repository endpoints.

Whilst we have tried to mitigate against possible XSS attacks (e.g. https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/1021) we recommend running matrix homeservers on a dedicated domain name, to limit any malicious user generated content served to web browsers a matrix API from being able to attack webapps hosted on the same domain. This is particularly true of sharing a matrix webclient and server on the same domain.

See https://github.com/vector-im/vector-web/issues/1977 and https://developer.github.com/changes/2014-04-25-user-content-security for more details.

Platform-Specific Instructions

Debian

Matrix provides official Debian packages via apt from http://matrix.org/packages/debian/. Note that these packages do not include a client - choose one from https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html (or build your own with one of our SDKs :)

Fedora

Synapse is in the Fedora repositories as matrix-synapse:

sudo dnf install matrix-synapse

Oleg Girko provides Fedora RPMs at https://obs.infoserver.lv/project/monitor/matrix-synapse

ArchLinux

The quickest way to get up and running with ArchLinux is probably with the community package https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/matrix-synapse/, which should pull in most of the necessary dependencies. If the default web client is to be served (enabled by default in the generated config), https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/python2-matrix-angular-sdk/ will also need to be installed.

Alternatively, to install using pip a few changes may be needed as ArchLinux defaults to python 3, but synapse currently assumes python 2.7 by default:

pip may be outdated (6.0.7-1 and needs to be upgraded to 6.0.8-1 ):

sudo pip2.7 install --upgrade pip

You also may need to explicitly specify python 2.7 again during the install request:

pip2.7 install https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tarball/master

If you encounter an error with lib bcrypt causing an Wrong ELF Class: ELFCLASS32 (x64 Systems), you may need to reinstall py-bcrypt to correctly compile it under the right architecture. (This should not be needed if installing under virtualenv):

sudo pip2.7 uninstall py-bcrypt
sudo pip2.7 install py-bcrypt

During setup of Synapse you need to call python2.7 directly again:

cd ~/.synapse
python2.7 -m synapse.app.homeserver \
  --server-name machine.my.domain.name \
  --config-path homeserver.yaml \
  --generate-config

...substituting your host and domain name as appropriate.

FreeBSD

Synapse can be installed via FreeBSD Ports or Packages contributed by Brendan Molloy from:

  • Ports: cd /usr/ports/net-im/py-matrix-synapse && make install clean
  • Packages: pkg install py27-matrix-synapse

OpenBSD

There is currently no port for OpenBSD. Additionally, OpenBSD's security settings require a slightly more difficult installation process.

  1. Create a new directory in /usr/local called _synapse. Also, create a new user called _synapse and set that directory as the new user's home. This is required because, by default, OpenBSD only allows binaries which need write and execute permissions on the same memory space to be run from /usr/local.
  2. su to the new _synapse user and change to their home directory.
  3. Create a new virtualenv: virtualenv -p python2.7 ~/.synapse
  4. Source the virtualenv configuration located at /usr/local/_synapse/.synapse/bin/activate. This is done in ksh by using the . command, rather than bash's source.
  5. Optionally, use pip to install lxml, which Synapse needs to parse webpages for their titles.
  6. Use pip to install this repository: pip install https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/tarball/master
  7. Optionally, change _synapse's shell to /bin/false to reduce the chance of a compromised Synapse server being used to take over your box.

After this, you may proceed with the rest of the install directions.

NixOS

Robin Lambertz has packaged Synapse for NixOS at: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/services/misc/matrix-synapse.nix

Windows Install

Synapse can be installed on Cygwin. It requires the following Cygwin packages:

  • gcc
  • git
  • libffi-devel
  • openssl (and openssl-devel, python-openssl)
  • python
  • python-setuptools

The content repository requires additional packages and will be unable to process uploads without them:

  • libjpeg8
  • libjpeg8-devel
  • zlib

If you choose to install Synapse without these packages, you will need to reinstall pillow for changes to be applied, e.g. pip uninstall pillow pip install pillow --user

Troubleshooting:

  • You may need to upgrade setuptools to get this to work correctly: pip install setuptools --upgrade.
  • You may encounter errors indicating that ffi.h is missing, even with libffi-devel installed. If you do, copy the .h files: cp /usr/lib/libffi-3.0.13/include/*.h /usr/include
  • You may need to install libsodium from source in order to install PyNacl. If you do, you may need to create a symlink to libsodium.a so ld can find it: ln -s /usr/local/lib/libsodium.a /usr/lib/libsodium.a

Troubleshooting