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Choosing your server name

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.

Installing Synapse

Installing from source

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

System requirements:

  • POSIX-compliant system (tested on Linux & OS X)
  • Python 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 or 3.8.
  • At least 1GB of free RAM if you want to join large public rooms like #matrix:matrix.org

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. See Platform-Specific Instructions for information on installing these on various platforms.

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 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.)

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

Platform-Specific Instructions

Debian/Ubuntu/Raspbian

Installing prerequisites on Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python3-dev libffi-dev \
                     python3-pip python3-setuptools sqlite3 \
                     libssl-dev python3-virtualenv libjpeg-dev libxslt1-dev

ArchLinux

Installing prerequisites on ArchLinux:

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

CentOS/Fedora

Installing prerequisites on CentOS 8 or Fedora>26:

sudo dnf install libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel libzip-devel freetype-devel \
                 libwebp-devel tk-devel redhat-rpm-config \
                 python3-virtualenv libffi-devel openssl-devel
sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"

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 \
                 python3-virtualenv libffi-devel openssl-devel
sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

Note that Synapse does not support versions of SQLite before 3.11, and CentOS 7 uses SQLite 3.7. You may be able to work around this by installing a more recent SQLite version, but it is recommended that you instead use a Postgres database: see docs/postgres.md.

macOS

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/Cellar/openssl\@1.1/1.1.1d/lib/

OpenSUSE

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

OpenBSD

Installing prerequisites on OpenBSD:

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

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

XXX: I suspect this is out of date.

  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 matrix-synapse
  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.

Windows

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.

Troubleshooting Installation

XXX a bunch of this is no longer relevant.

Synapse requires pip 8 or later, so if your OS provides too old a version you may need to manually upgrade it::

sudo pip install --upgrade pip

Installing may fail with Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement pymacaroons-pynacl (from matrix-synapse==0.12.0). You can fix this by manually upgrading pip and virtualenv::

sudo pip install --upgrade virtualenv

You can next rerun virtualenv -p python3 synapse to update the virtual env.

Installing may fail during installing virtualenv with InsecurePlatformWarning: A true SSLContext object is not available. This prevents urllib3 from configuring SSL appropriately and may cause certain SSL connections to fail. For more information, see https://urllib3.readthedocs.org/en/latest/security.html#insecureplatformwarning. You can fix this by manually installing ndg-httpsclient::

pip install --upgrade ndg-httpsclient

Installing may fail with mock requires setuptools>=17.1. Aborting installation. You can fix this by upgrading setuptools::

pip install --upgrade setuptools

If pip crashes mid-installation for reason (e.g. lost terminal), pip may refuse to run until you remove the temporary installation directory it created. To reset the installation::

rm -rf /tmp/pip_install_matrix

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

Prebuilt packages

As an alternative to installing from source, prebuilt packages are available for a number of platforms.

Docker images and Ansible playbooks

There is an offical 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, riot-web, coturn, mxisd, SSL support, etc.). For more details, see https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Debian/Ubuntu

Matrix.org packages

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.

Downstream Debian/Ubuntu packages

For buster and sid, Synapse is available in the Debian repositories and it should be possible to install it with simply:

    sudo apt install matrix-synapse

There is also a version of matrix-synapse in stretch-backports. Please see the Debian documentation on backports for information on how to use them.

We do not recommend using the packages in downstream Ubuntu at this time, as they are old and suffer from known security vulnerabilities.

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

OpenSUSE

Synapse is in the OpenSUSE repositories as matrix-synapse:

sudo zypper install matrix-synapse

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

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/

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.

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

Void Linux

Synapse can be found in the void repositories as 'synapse':

xbps-install -Su
xbps-install -S synapse

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

NixOS

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

Setting up Synapse

Once you have installed synapse as above, you will need to configure it.

TLS certificates

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 and tls_private_key_path lines under the TLS section. You can either point these settings at an existing certificate and key, or you can enable Synapse's built-in ACME (Let's Encrypt) support. Instructions for having Synapse automatically provision and renew federation certificates through ACME can be found at ACME.md. Note that, as pointed out in that document, this feature will not work with installs set up after November 2019.

    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, use fullchain.pem as your certificate, not cert.pem).

For a more detailed guide to configuring your server for federation, see federate.md

Email

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.

Registering a user

The easiest way to create a new user is to do so from a client like Riot.

Alternatively you can do so from the command line if you have installed via pip.

This can be done as follows:

$ source ~/synapse/env/bin/activate
$ synctl start # if not already running
$ register_new_matrix_user -c homeserver.yaml http://localhost:8008
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.

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.md for details.

URL previews

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 and netaddr python dependencies 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.