Matrix Homeserver

setting up a dendrite server instance

Matrix is the chat protocol of the future. It is federated, meaning anyone can host their own server which communicates with all other servers. The matrix team have an open-source, second-generation, server called dendrite written in Go that I wanted to play with.

Here are the steps I followed to get to a working dendrite homeserver (I already had docker and caddy installed).

First copy the dendrite docker-compose.yaml into a working directory.

Then, run the following commands in the directory with your docker-compose.yaml, filling in variables like <xyz>:

mkdir -p ./config

docker run --rm --entrypoint="/usr/bin/generate-keys" \
-v $(pwd)/config:/mnt \
matrixdotorg/dendrite-monolith:latest \
-private-key /mnt/matrix_key.pem

docker run --rm --entrypoint="/bin/sh" \
-v $(pwd)/config:/mnt \
matrixdotorg/dendrite-monolith:latest \
-c "/usr/bin/generate-config \
-dir /var/dendrite/ \
-db postgres://dendrite:<some-password>@postgres/dendrite?sslmode=disable \
-server <your-domain> > /mnt/dendrite.yaml"

Next update your config in the following way: 1. edit docker-compose.yaml adding the postgres password to POSTGRES_PASSWORD 2. edit docker-compose.yaml removing the 8448 port line (we will reverse proxy) 3. edit config/dendrite.yaml and filling client_api.registration_shared_secret: "aksjldalkjsdkl" 4. make sure client_api.registration_disabled = true

Run:

docker-compose up -d

# Now we create our admin user
docker ps  # note the dendrite container ID

docker exec -it <container-id> /usr/bin/create-account -config /etc/dendrite/dendrite.yaml -username <name> -admin

Enter your user’s password when prompted, then edit config/dendrite.yaml and unfill client_api.registration_shared_secret: "".

If using Caddy (the best web server), you can update your config from something like:

jenne.uk {
file_server
}

to

jenne.uk, jenne.uk:8448 {
file_server

handle /.well-known/matrix/server {
respond `{"m.server": "jenne.uk:8448"}`
}

reverse_proxy /_matrix/* localhost:8008

Check you have configured your server correctly with https://federationtester.matrix.org/

Enjoy!