There are 3 steps to follow under Installation Instructions.
- Installation Instructions
It is important to choose the name for your server before you install Synapse, because it cannot be changed later.
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 [email protected]
rather than
[email protected]
) - but doing so may require more advanced setup: see
Setting up Federation.
(Prebuilt packages are available for some platforms - see Prebuilt packages.)
When installing from source please make sure that the Platform-specific prerequisites are already installed.
System requirements:
- POSIX-compliant system (tested on Linux & OS X)
- Python 3.5.2 or later, up to Python 3.9.
- At least 1GB of free RAM if you want to join large public rooms like #matrix:matrix.org
To install the Synapse homeserver run:
mkdir -p ~/synapse
virtualenv -p python3 ~/synapse/env
source ~/synapse/env/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install matrix-synapse
This will download Synapse from PyPI
and install it, along with the python libraries it uses, into a virtual environment
under ~/synapse/env
. Feel free to pick a different directory if you
prefer.
This Synapse installation can then be later upgraded by using pip again with the update flag:
source ~/synapse/env/bin/activate
pip install -U matrix-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
.
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 homeserver to
identify itself to other homeserver, 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 homeserver's keys, you may find that other homeserver 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).
To actually run your new homeserver, pick a working directory for Synapse to
run (e.g. ~/synapse
), and:
cd ~/synapse
source env/bin/activate
synctl start
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 install build-essential python3-dev libffi-dev \
python3-pip python3-setuptools sqlite3 \
libssl-dev virtualenv libjpeg-dev libxslt1-dev
Installing prerequisites on ArchLinux:
sudo pacman -S base-devel python python-pip \
python-setuptools python-virtualenv sqlite3
Installing prerequisites on CentOS or Fedora Linux:
sudo dnf install libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel libzip-devel freetype-devel \
libwebp-devel libxml2-devel libxslt-devel libpq-devel \
python3-virtualenv libffi-devel openssl-devel python3-devel
sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
Installing prerequisites on macOS:
xcode-select --install
sudo easy_install pip
sudo pip install virtualenv
brew install pkg-config libffi
On macOS Catalina (10.15) you may need to explicitly install OpenSSL
via brew and inform pip
about it so that psycopg2
builds:
brew install [email protected]
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"
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
A port of Synapse is available under net/synapse
. The filesystem
underlying the homeserver directory (defaults to /var/synapse
) has to be
mounted with wxallowed
(cf. mount(8)
), so creating a separate filesystem
and mounting it to /var/synapse
should be taken into consideration.
To be able to build Synapse's dependency on python the WRKOBJDIR
(cf. bsd.port.mk(5)
) for building python, too, needs to be on a filesystem
mounted with wxallowed
(cf. mount(8)
).
Creating a WRKOBJDIR
for building python under /usr/local
(which on a
default OpenBSD installation is mounted with wxallowed
):
doas mkdir /usr/local/pobj_wxallowed
Assuming PORTS_PRIVSEP=Yes
(cf. bsd.port.mk(5)
) and SUDO=doas
are
configured in /etc/mk.conf
:
doas chown _pbuild:_pbuild /usr/local/pobj_wxallowed
Setting the WRKOBJDIR
for building python:
echo WRKOBJDIR_lang/python/3.7=/usr/local/pobj_wxallowed \\nWRKOBJDIR_lang/python/2.7=/usr/local/pobj_wxallowed >> /etc/mk.conf
Building Synapse:
cd /usr/ports/net/synapse
make install
If you wish to run or develop Synapse on Windows, the Windows Subsystem For Linux provides a Linux environment on Windows 10 which is capable of using the Debian, Fedora, or source installation methods. More information about WSL can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10 for Windows 10 and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-on-server for Windows Server.
As an alternative to installing from source, prebuilt packages are available for a number of platforms.
There is an official synapse image available at https://hub.docker.com/r/matrixdotorg/synapse which can be used with the docker-compose file available at contrib/docker. Further information on this including configuration options is available in the README on hub.docker.com.
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/
Slavi Pantaleev has created an Ansible playbook, which installs the offical Docker image of Matrix Synapse along with many other Matrix-related services (Postgres database, Element, coturn, ma1sd, SSL support, etc.). For more details, see https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
Matrix.org provides Debian/Ubuntu packages of the latest stable version of Synapse via https://packages.matrix.org/debian/. They are available for Debian 9 (Stretch), Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial), and later. To use them:
sudo apt install -y lsb-release wget apt-transport-https
sudo 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" |
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/matrix-org.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install matrix-synapse-py3
Note: if you followed a previous version of these instructions which
recommended using apt-key add
to add an old key from
https://matrix.org/packages/debian/
, you should note that this key has been
revoked. You should remove the old key with sudo apt-key remove C35EB17E1EAE708E6603A9B3AD0592FE47F0DF61
, and follow the above instructions to
update your configuration.
The fingerprint of the repository signing key (as shown by gpg /usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg
) is
AAF9AE843A7584B5A3E4CD2BCF45A512DE2DA058
.
We do not recommend using the packages from the default Debian buster
repository at this time, as they are old and suffer from known security
vulnerabilities. You can install the latest version of Synapse from
our repository or from buster-backports
. Please
see the Debian documentation
for information on how to use backports.
If you are using Debian sid
or testing, Synapse is available in the default
repositories and it should be possible to install it simply with:
sudo apt install matrix-synapse
We do not recommend using the packages in the default Ubuntu repository at this time, as they are old and suffer from known security vulnerabilities. The latest version of Synapse can be installed from our repository.
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
Synapse is in the OpenSUSE repositories as matrix-synapse
:
sudo zypper install matrix-synapse
Unofficial package are built for SLES 15 in the openSUSE:Backports:SLE-15 repository at https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Backports:/SLE-15/standard/
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.
pip may be outdated (6.0.7-1 and needs to be upgraded to 6.0.8-1 ):
sudo pip install --upgrade pip
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 pip uninstall py-bcrypt
sudo pip install py-bcrypt
Synapse can be found in the void repositories as 'synapse':
xbps-install -Su
xbps-install -S synapse
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 py37-matrix-synapse
As of OpenBSD 6.7 Synapse is available as a pre-compiled binary. The filesystem
underlying the homeserver directory (defaults to /var/synapse
) has to be
mounted with wxallowed
(cf. mount(8)
), so creating a separate filesystem
and mounting it to /var/synapse
should be taken into consideration.
Installing Synapse:
doas pkg_add synapse
Robin Lambertz has packaged Synapse for NixOS at: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/services/misc/matrix-synapse.nix
Once you have installed synapse as above, you will need to configure it.
By default Synapse uses an SQLite database and in doing so trades performance for convenience. Almost all installations should opt to use PostgreSQL instead. Advantages include:
- significant performance improvements due to the superior threading and caching model, smarter query optimiser
- allowing the DB to be run on separate hardware
For information on how to install and use PostgreSQL in Synapse, please see docs/postgres.md
SQLite is only acceptable for testing purposes. SQLite should not be used in a production server. Synapse will perform poorly when using SQLite, especially when participating in large rooms.
The default configuration exposes a single HTTP port on the local
interface: http://localhost:8008
. It is suitable for local testing,
but for any practical use, you will need Synapse's APIs to be served
over HTTPS.
The recommended way to do so is to set up a reverse proxy on port
8448
. You can find documentation on doing so in
docs/reverse_proxy.md.
Alternatively, you can configure Synapse to expose an HTTPS port. To do
so, you will need to edit homeserver.yaml
, as follows:
- First, under the
listeners
section, uncomment the configuration for the TLS-enabled listener. (Remove the hash sign (#
) at the start of each line). The relevant lines are like this:
- port: 8448
type: http
tls: true
resources:
- names: [client, federation]
-
You will also need to uncomment the
tls_certificate_path
andtls_private_key_path
lines under theTLS
section. You will need to manage provisioning of these certificates yourself.If you are using your own certificate, be sure to use a
.pem
file that includes the full certificate chain including any intermediate certificates (for instance, if using certbot, usefullchain.pem
as your certificate, notcert.pem
).
For a more detailed guide to configuring your server for federation, see federate.md.
Setting up the client Well-Known URI is optional but if you set it up, it will
allow users to enter their full username (e.g. @user:<server_name>
) into clients
which support well-known lookup to automatically configure the homeserver and
identity server URLs. This is useful so that users don't have to memorize or think
about the actual homeserver URL you are using.
The URL https://<server_name>/.well-known/matrix/client
should return JSON in
the following format.
{
"m.homeserver": {
"base_url": "https://<matrix.example.com>"
}
}
It can optionally contain identity server information as well.
{
"m.homeserver": {
"base_url": "https://<matrix.example.com>"
},
"m.identity_server": {
"base_url": "https://<identity.example.com>"
}
}
To work in browser based clients, the file must be served with the appropriate
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) headers. A recommended value would be
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
which would allow all browser based clients to
view it.
In nginx this would be something like:
location /.well-known/matrix/client {
return 200 '{"m.homeserver": {"base_url": "https://<matrix.example.com>"}}';
default_type application/json;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
}
You should also ensure the public_baseurl
option in homeserver.yaml
is set
correctly. public_baseurl
should be set to the URL that clients will use to
connect to your server. This is the same URL you put for the m.homeserver
base_url
above.
public_baseurl: "https://<matrix.example.com>"
It is desirable for Synapse to have the capability to send email. This allows Synapse to send password reset emails, send verifications when an email address is added to a user's account, and send email notifications to users when they receive new messages.
To configure an SMTP server for Synapse, modify the configuration section
headed email
, and be sure to have at least the smtp_host
, smtp_port
and notif_from
fields filled out. You may also need to set smtp_user
,
smtp_pass
, and require_transport_security
.
If email is not configured, password reset, registration and notifications via email will be disabled.
The easiest way to create a new user is to do so from a client like Element.
Alternatively, you can do so from the command line. This can be done as follows:
- If synapse was installed via pip, activate the virtualenv as follows (if Synapse was
installed via a prebuilt package,
register_new_matrix_user
should already be on the search path):cd ~/synapse source env/bin/activate synctl start # if not already running
- Run the following command:
register_new_matrix_user -c homeserver.yaml http://localhost:8008
This will prompt you to add details for the new user, and will then connect to the running Synapse to create the new user. For example:
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, including admin accounts,
on your server even if enable_registration
is false
.
For reliable VoIP calls to be routed via this homeserver, you MUST configure a TURN server. See docs/turn-howto.md for details.
Synapse includes support for previewing URLs, which is disabled by default. To
turn it on you must enable the url_preview_enabled: True
config parameter
and explicitly specify the IP ranges that Synapse is not allowed to spider for
previewing in the url_preview_ip_range_blacklist
configuration parameter.
This is critical from a security perspective to stop arbitrary Matrix users
spidering 'internal' URLs on your network. At the very least we recommend that
your loopback and RFC1918 IP addresses are blacklisted.
This also requires the optional lxml
python dependency to be installed. This
in turn requires the libxml2
library to be available - on Debian/Ubuntu this
means apt-get install libxml2-dev
, or equivalent for your OS.
pip
seems to leak lots of memory during installation. For instance, a Linux
host with 512MB of RAM may run out of memory whilst installing Twisted. If this
happens, you will have to individually install the dependencies which are
failing, e.g.:
pip install twisted
If you have any other problems, feel free to ask in #synapse:matrix.org.