Matrix Synapse (Docker Compose)

Prerequisites

1. Docker
2. Docker Compose
3. A domain

Setup

Create a .env file

1. Create a copy of .env.example:

cp .env.example .env

2. Replace VOLUME_PATH variable if you wish to change where volume data is stored

3. Replace SERVER_NAME variable with your Matrix server's domain name (e.g. matrix.example.com)

4. Replace TZ variable with your timezone

5. Create the required PostgreSQL secret file postgres_password.txt and insert a secure password (you should consider restricting access to this file)

Generate homeserver.yaml

1. Run the following command to use the matrixdotorg/synapse image to generate a homeserver.yaml file (replace $VOLUME_PATH and $SERVER_NAME with the values you set in your .env file):

sudo docker run -it --rm \
    --mount type=bind,src=$VOLUME_PATH/data,dst=/data \
    -e SYNAPSE_SERVER_NAME=$SERVER_NAME \
    -e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no \ # Change to yes if you wish to report stats to Matrix
    matrixdotorg/synapse:latest generate

The homeserver.yaml file should now exist at $VOLUME_PATH/data/homeserver.yaml

2. Open the newly created homeserver.yaml in your favourite editor

3. Locate the following lines in the config:

database:
  name: sqlite3
  args:
    database: /data/homeserver.db

4. Replace these lines with the following (replace secretpassword with the password you put into postgres_password.txt):

database:
  name: psycopg2
  txn_limit: 10000
  args:
    user: synapse_user
    password: secretpassword
    database: synapse
    host: postgres
    port: 5432
    cp_min: 5
    cp_max: 10

5. Bring up the containers!

sudo docker-compose -p matrix-synapse up -d