Before upgrading check if any special steps are required to upgrade from the version you currently have installed to the current version of Synapse. The extra instructions that may be required are listed later in this document.
If Synapse was installed using prebuilt packages, you will need to follow the normal process for upgrading those packages.
If Synapse was installed from source, then:
Activate the virtualenv before upgrading. For example, if Synapse is installed in a virtualenv in
~/synapse/envthen run:source ~/synapse/env/bin/activate
If Synapse was installed using pip then upgrade to the latest version by running:
pip install --upgrade matrix-synapse
If Synapse was installed using git then upgrade to the latest version by running:
git pull pip install --upgrade .Restart Synapse:
./synctl restart
To check whether your update was successful, you can check the running server version with:
# you may need to replace 'localhost:8008' if synapse is not configured
# to listen on port 8008.
curl http://localhost:8008/_synapse/admin/v1/server_versionRolling back to previous releases can be difficult, due to database schema changes between releases. Where we have been able to test the rollback process, this will be noted below.
In general, you will need to undo any changes made during the upgrade process, for example:
pip:
source env/bin/activate # replace `1.3.0` accordingly: pip install matrix-synapse==1.3.0
Debian:
# replace `1.3.0` and `stretch` accordingly: wget https://packages.matrix.org/debian/pool/main/m/matrix-synapse-py3/matrix-synapse-py3_1.3.0+stretch1_amd64.deb dpkg -i matrix-synapse-py3_1.3.0+stretch1_amd64.deb
Specifying a log_file config option will now cause Synapse to refuse to
start, and should be replaced by with the log_config option. Support for
the log_file option was removed in v1.3.0 and has since had no effect.
In an attempt to configure Synapse in a privacy preserving way, the default
behaviours of allow_public_rooms_without_auth and
allow_public_rooms_over_federation have been inverted. This means that by
default, only authenticated users querying the Client/Server API will be able
to query the room directory, and relatedly that the server will not share
room directory information with other servers over federation.
If your installation does not explicitly set these settings one way or the other
and you want either setting to be true then it will necessary to update
your homeserver configuration file accordingly.
For more details on the surrounding context see our explainer.
This release includes a database migration which may take several minutes to
complete if there are a large number (more than a million or so) of entries in
the devices table. This is only likely to a be a problem on very large
installations.
If you have configured a custom template directory with the
email.template_dir option, be aware that there are new templates regarding
registration and threepid management (see below) that must be included.
registration.htmlandregistration.txtregistration_success.htmlandregistration_failure.htmladd_threepid.htmlandadd_threepid.txtadd_threepid_failure.htmlandadd_threepid_success.html
Synapse will expect these files to exist inside the configured template directory, and will fail to start if they are absent. To view the default templates, see synapse/res/templates.
Note: As of this release, users will be unable to add phone numbers or email addresses to their accounts, without changes to the Synapse configuration. This includes adding an email address during registration.
It is possible for a user to associate an email address or phone number with their account, for a number of reasons:
- for use when logging in, as an alternative to the user id.
- in the case of email, as an alternative contact to help with account recovery.
- in the case of email, to receive notifications of missed messages.
Before an email address or phone number can be added to a user's account, or before such an address is used to carry out a password-reset, Synapse must confirm the operation with the owner of the email address or phone number. It does this by sending an email or text giving the user a link or token to confirm receipt. This process is known as '3pid verification'. ('3pid', or 'threepid', stands for third-party identifier, and we use it to refer to external identifiers such as email addresses and phone numbers.)
Previous versions of Synapse delegated the task of 3pid verification to an
identity server by default. In most cases this server is vector.im or
matrix.org.
In Synapse 1.4.0, for security and privacy reasons, the homeserver will no longer delegate this task to an identity server by default. Instead, the server administrator will need to explicitly decide how they would like the verification messages to be sent.
In the medium term, the vector.im and matrix.org identity servers will
disable support for delegated 3pid verification entirely. However, in order to
ease the transition, they will retain the capability for a limited
period. Delegated email verification will be disabled on Monday 2nd December
2019 (giving roughly 2 months notice). Disabling delegated SMS verification
will follow some time after that once SMS verification support lands in
Synapse.
Once delegated 3pid verification support has been disabled in the vector.im and
matrix.org identity servers, all Synapse versions that depend on those
instances will be unable to verify email and phone numbers through them. There
are no imminent plans to remove delegated 3pid verification from Sydent
generally. (Sydent is the identity server project that backs the vector.im and
matrix.org instances).
Following upgrade, to continue verifying email (e.g. as part of the registration process), admins can either:-
- Configure Synapse to use an email server.
- Run or choose an identity server which allows delegated email verification and delegate to it.
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.
See the sample configuration file for more details on these settings.
Some admins will wish to continue using email verification as part of the registration process, but will not immediately have an appropriate SMTP server at hand.
To this end, we will continue to support email verification delegation via the
vector.im and matrix.org identity servers for two months. Support for
delegated email verification will be disabled on Monday 2nd December.
The account_threepid_delegates dictionary defines whether the homeserver
should delegate an external server (typically an identity server) to handle sending
confirmation messages via email and SMS.
So to delegate email verification, in homeserver.yaml, set
account_threepid_delegates.email to the base URL of an identity server. For
example:
account_threepid_delegates:
email: https://example.com # Delegate email sending to example.comNote that account_threepid_delegates.email replaces the deprecated
email.trust_identity_server_for_password_resets: if
email.trust_identity_server_for_password_resets is set to true, and
account_threepid_delegates.email is not set, then the first entry in
trusted_third_party_id_servers will be used as the
account_threepid_delegate for email. This is to ensure compatibility with
existing Synapse installs that set up external server handling for these tasks
before v1.4.0. If email.trust_identity_server_for_password_resets is
true and no trusted identity server domains are configured, Synapse will
report an error and refuse to start.
If email.trust_identity_server_for_password_resets is false or absent
and no email delegate is configured in account_threepid_delegates,
then Synapse will send email verification messages itself, using the configured
SMTP server (see above).
that type.
Synapse does not support phone-number verification itself, so the only way to
maintain the ability for users to add phone numbers to their accounts will be
by continuing to delegate phone number verification to the matrix.org and
vector.im identity servers (or another identity server that supports SMS
sending).
The account_threepid_delegates dictionary defines whether the homeserver
should delegate an external server (typically an identity server) to handle sending
confirmation messages via email and SMS.
So to delegate phone number verification, in homeserver.yaml, set
account_threepid_delegates.msisdn to the base URL of an identity
server. For example:
account_threepid_delegates:
msisdn: https://example.com # Delegate sms sending to example.comThe matrix.org and vector.im identity servers will continue to support
delegated phone number verification via SMS until such time as it is possible
for admins to configure their servers to perform phone number verification
directly. More details will follow in a future release.
If you encounter problems with v1.4.0, it should be possible to roll back to v1.3.1, subject to the following:
The 'room statistics' engine was heavily reworked in this release (see #5971), including significant changes to the database schema, which are not easily reverted. This will cause the room statistics engine to stop updating when you downgrade.
The room statistics are essentially unused in v1.3.1 (in future versions of Synapse, they will be used to populate the room directory), so there should be no loss of functionality. However, the statistics engine will write errors to the logs, which can be avoided by setting the following in homeserver.yaml:
stats: enabled: false
Don't forget to re-enable it when you upgrade again, in preparation for its use in the room directory!
Some counter metrics have been renamed, with the old names deprecated. See the metrics documentation for details.
Synapse v1.1.0 removes support for older Python and PostgreSQL versions, as outlined in our deprecation notice.
Synapse v1.1.0 has a minimum Python requirement of Python 3.5. Python 3.6 or Python 3.7 are recommended as they have improved internal string handling, significantly reducing memory usage.
If you use current versions of the Matrix.org-distributed Debian packages or Docker images, action is not required.
If you install Synapse in a Python virtual environment, please see "Upgrading to v0.34.0" for notes on setting up a new virtualenv under Python 3.
If using PostgreSQL under Synapse, you will need to use PostgreSQL 9.5 or above. Please see the PostgreSQL documentation for more details on upgrading your database.
Synapse v1.0 is the first release to enforce validation of TLS certificates for the federation API. It is therefore essential that your certificates are correctly configured. See the FAQ for more information.
Note, v1.0 installations will also no longer be able to federate with servers that have not correctly configured their certificates.
In rare cases, it may be desirable to disable certificate checking: for example, it might be essential to be able to federate with a given legacy server in a closed federation. This can be done in one of two ways:-
- Configure the global switch
federation_verify_certificatestofalse. - Configure a whitelist of server domains to trust via
federation_certificate_verification_whitelist.
See the sample configuration file for more details on these settings.
When a user requests a password reset, Synapse will send an email to the user to confirm the request.
Previous versions of Synapse delegated the job of sending this email to an identity server. If the identity server was somehow malicious or became compromised, it would be theoretically possible to hijack an account through this means.
Therefore, by default, Synapse v1.0 will send the confirmation email itself. If Synapse is not configured with an SMTP server, password reset via email will be disabled.
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 you are absolutely certain that you wish to continue using an identity
server for password resets, set trust_identity_server_for_password_resets to true.
See the sample configuration file for more details on these settings.
Some new templates have been added to the default template directory for the purpose of the
homeserver sending its own password reset emails. If you have configured a custom
template_dir in your Synapse config, these files will need to be added.
password_reset.html and password_reset.txt are HTML and plain text templates
respectively that contain the contents of what will be emailed to the user upon attempting to
reset their password via email. password_reset_success.html and
password_reset_failure.html are HTML files that the content of which (assuming no redirect
URL is set) will be shown to the user after they attempt to click the link in the email sent
to them.
Please be aware that, before Synapse v1.0 is released around March 2019, you will need to replace any self-signed certificates with those verified by a root CA. Information on how to do so can be found at the ACME docs.
For more information on configuring TLS certificates see the FAQ.
This release is the first to fully support Python 3. Synapse will now run on Python versions 3.5, or 3.6 (as well as 2.7). We recommend switching to Python 3, as it has been shown to give performance improvements.
For users who have installed Synapse into a virtualenv, we recommend doing this by creating a new virtualenv. For example:
virtualenv -p python3 ~/synapse/env3 source ~/synapse/env3/bin/activate pip install matrix-synapse
You can then start synapse as normal, having activated the new virtualenv:
cd ~/synapse source env3/bin/activate synctl start
Users who have installed from distribution packages should see the relevant package documentation. See below for notes on Debian packages.
When upgrading to Python 3, you must make sure that your log files are configured as UTF-8, by adding
encoding: utf8to theRotatingFileHandlerconfiguration (if you have one) in your<server>.log.configfile. For example, if yourlog.configfile contains:handlers: file: class: logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler formatter: precise filename: homeserver.log maxBytes: 104857600 backupCount: 10 filters: [context] console: class: logging.StreamHandler formatter: precise filters: [context]Then you should update this to be:
handlers: file: class: logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler formatter: precise filename: homeserver.log maxBytes: 104857600 backupCount: 10 filters: [context] encoding: utf8 console: class: logging.StreamHandler formatter: precise filters: [context]There is no need to revert this change if downgrading to Python 2.
We are also making available Debian packages which will run Synapse on Python 3. You can switch to these packages with
apt-get install matrix-synapse-py3, however, please read debian/NEWS before doing so. The existingmatrix-synapsepackages will continue to use Python 2 for the time being.This release removes the
riot.imfrom the default list of trusted identity servers.If
riot.imis in your homeserver's list oftrusted_third_party_id_servers, you should remove it. It was added in case a hypothetical future identity server was put there. If you don't remove it, users may be unable to deactivate their accounts.This release no longer installs the (unmaintained) Matrix Console web client as part of the default installation. It is possible to re-enable it by installing it separately and setting the
web_client_locationconfig option, but please consider switching to another client.
This release removes the example email notification templates from
res/templates (they are now internal to the python package). This should
only affect you if you (a) deploy your Synapse instance from a git checkout or
a github snapshot URL, and (b) have email notifications enabled.
If you have email notifications enabled, you should ensure that
email.template_dir is either configured to point at a directory where you
have installed customised templates, or leave it unset to use the default
templates.
This release expands the anonymous usage stats sent if the opt-in
report_stats configuration is set to true. We now capture RSS memory
and cpu use at a very coarse level. This requires administrators to install
the optional psutil python module.
We would appreciate it if you could assist by ensuring this module is available
and report_stats is enabled. This will let us see if performance changes to
synapse are having an impact to the general community.
If you want to use the new URL previewing API (/_matrix/media/r0/preview_url) then you have to explicitly enable it in the config and update your dependencies dependencies. See README.rst for details.
This release includes the option to send anonymous usage stats to matrix.org,
and requires that administrators explictly opt in or out by setting the
report_stats option to either true or false.
We would really appreciate it if you could help our project out by reporting anonymized usage statistics from your homeserver. Only very basic aggregate data (e.g. number of users) will be reported, but it helps us to track the growth of the Matrix community, and helps us to make Matrix a success, as well as to convince other networks that they should peer with us.
Application services have had a breaking API change in this version.
They can no longer register themselves with a home server using the AS HTTP API. This
decision was made because a compromised application service with free reign to register
any regex in effect grants full read/write access to the home server if a regex of .*
is used. An attack where a compromised AS re-registers itself with .* was deemed too
big of a security risk to ignore, and so the ability to register with the HS remotely has
been removed.
It has been replaced by specifying a list of application service registrations in
homeserver.yaml:
app_service_config_files: ["registration-01.yaml", "registration-02.yaml"]
Where registration-01.yaml looks like:
url: <String> # e.g. "https://my.application.service.com"
as_token: <String>
hs_token: <String>
sender_localpart: <String> # This is a new field which denotes the user_id localpart when using the AS token
namespaces:
users:
- exclusive: <Boolean>
regex: <String> # e.g. "@prefix_.*"
aliases:
- exclusive: <Boolean>
regex: <String>
rooms:
- exclusive: <Boolean>
regex: <String>
Servers which use captchas will need to add their public key to:
static/client/register/register_config.js
window.matrixRegistrationConfig = {
recaptcha_public_key: "YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY"
};
This is required in order to support registration fallback (typically used on mobile devices).
New dependencies are:
- pydenticon
- simplejson
- syutil
- matrix-angular-sdk
To pull in these dependencies in a virtual env, run:
python synapse/python_dependencies.py | xargs -n 1 pip install
To pull in new dependencies, run:
python setup.py develop --user
This update includes a change to the database schema. To upgrade you first need to upgrade the database by running:
python scripts/upgrade_db_to_v0.6.0.py <db> <server_name> <signing_key>
Where <db> is the location of the database, <server_name> is the server name as specified in the synapse configuration, and <signing_key> is the location of the signing key as specified in the synapse configuration.
This may take some time to complete. Failures of signatures and content hashes can safely be ignored.
Depending on precisely when you installed v0.5.0 you may have ended up with a stale release of the reference matrix webclient installed as a python module. To uninstall it and ensure you are depending on the latest module, please run:
$ pip uninstall syweb
The webclient has been split out into a seperate repository/pacakage in this release. Before you restart your homeserver you will need to pull in the webclient package by running:
python setup.py develop --user
This release completely changes the database schema and so requires upgrading it before starting the new version of the homeserver.
The script "database-prepare-for-0.5.0.sh" should be used to upgrade the database. This will save all user information, such as logins and profiles, but will otherwise purge the database. This includes messages, which rooms the home server was a member of and room alias mappings.
If you would like to keep your history, please take a copy of your database file and ask for help in #matrix:matrix.org. The upgrade process is, unfortunately, non trivial and requires human intervention to resolve any resulting conflicts during the upgrade process.
Before running the command the homeserver should be first completely shutdown. To run it, simply specify the location of the database, e.g.:
./scripts/database-prepare-for-0.5.0.sh "homeserver.db"
Once this has successfully completed it will be safe to restart the homeserver. You may notice that the homeserver takes a few seconds longer to restart than usual as it reinitializes the database.
On startup of the new version, users can either rejoin remote rooms using room aliases or by being reinvited. Alternatively, if any other homeserver sends a message to a room that the homeserver was previously in the local HS will automatically rejoin the room.
This release needs an updated syutil version. Run:
python setup.py develop
You will also need to upgrade your configuration as the signing key format has changed. Run:
python -m synapse.app.homeserver --config-path <CONFIG> --generate-config
This registration API now closely matches the login API. This introduces a bit more backwards and forwards between the HS and the client, but this improves the overall flexibility of the API. You can now GET on /register to retrieve a list of valid registration flows. Upon choosing one, they are submitted in the same way as login, e.g:
{
type: m.login.password,
user: foo,
password: bar
}
The default HS supports 2 flows, with and without Identity Server email
authentication. Enabling captcha on the HS will add in an extra step to all
flows: m.login.recaptcha which must be completed before you can transition
to the next stage. There is a new login type: m.login.email.identity which
contains the threepidCreds key which were previously sent in the original
register request. For more information on this, see the specification.
The VoIP specification has changed between v0.2.0 and v0.3.0. Users should refresh any browser tabs to get the latest web client code. Users on v0.2.0 of the web client will not be able to call those on v0.3.0 and vice versa.
The home server now requires setting up of SSL config before it can run. To automatically generate default config use:
$ python synapse/app/homeserver.py \
--server-name machine.my.domain.name \
--bind-port 8448 \
--config-path homeserver.config \
--generate-config
This config can be edited if desired, for example to specify a different SSL certificate to use. Once done you can run the home server using:
$ python synapse/app/homeserver.py --config-path homeserver.config
See the README.rst for more information.
Also note that some config options have been renamed, including:
- "host" to "server-name"
- "database" to "database-path"
- "port" to "bind-port" and "unsecure-port"
This release completely changes the database schema and so requires upgrading it before starting the new version of the homeserver.
The script "database-prepare-for-0.0.1.sh" should be used to upgrade the database. This will save all user information, such as logins and profiles, but will otherwise purge the database. This includes messages, which rooms the home server was a member of and room alias mappings.
Before running the command the homeserver should be first completely shutdown. To run it, simply specify the location of the database, e.g.:
./scripts/database-prepare-for-0.0.1.sh "homeserver.db"
Once this has successfully completed it will be safe to restart the homeserver. You may notice that the homeserver takes a few seconds longer to restart than usual as it reinitializes the database.
On startup of the new version, users can either rejoin remote rooms using room aliases or by being reinvited. Alternatively, if any other homeserver sends a message to a room that the homeserver was previously in the local HS will automatically rejoin the room.