My friends are open to leaving Discord which has finally given me a reason to look into Element/Matrix. I found the install instructions and am immediately put off. Is this it? No official docker compose? 😞

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    141·
    2 days ago

    Firstly, I wish you the best of luck in your community’s journey away from Discord. This may be a good time to assess what your community needs from a new platform, since Discord targeted various use-cases that no single replacement platform can hope to replace in full. Instead, by identifying exactly what your group needs and doesn’t need, that will steer you in the right direction.

    As for Element, bear in mind that their community and paid versions do not exactly target a hobbyist self-hosting clientele. Instead, Element is apparently geared more for enterprise on-premises deployment (like Slack, Atlassian JIRA, Asterisk PBX) and that’s probably why the community version is also based on Kubernetes. This doesn’t mean you can’t use it, but their assumptions about deployments are that you have an on-premises cloud.

    Fortunately, there are other Matrix homeservers available, including one written in Rust that has both bare metal and Docker deployment instructions. Note that I’m not endorsing this implementation, but only know of it through this FOSDEM talk describing how they dealt with malicious actors.

    As an aside, I have briefly considered Matrix before as a group communications platform, but was put off by their poor E2EE decisions, for both the main client implementation and in the protocol itself. Odd as it sounds, poor encryption is worse than no encryption, because of the false assurance it gives. If I did use Matrix, I would not enable E2EE because it doesn’t offer me many privacy guarantees, compared to say, Signal.

  • vane@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    If you’re proficient it’s 30minutes

    Something like this for server.

    generate config

    docker run -it --rm \
    -v <your-data-path>:/data \
    -e SYNAPSE_SERVER_NAME=<your-public-address-subdomain> \
    -e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no \
    matrixdotorg/synapse:v1.136.0 generate

    run

    docker run -d \
  --restart=always \
  --name synapse \
  -e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no \
  -v <your-data-path>:/data \
  -p 8008:8008 matrixdotorg/synapse:v1.136.0

    register user

    docker exec -ti synapse register_new_matrix_user http://localhost:8008/ -c /data/homeserver.yaml -u <username> -p <password> --exists-ok

    Proxy it using ex. openresty / nginx

    location / {
        proxy_pass    http://127.0.0.1:8008/;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header    Upgrade         $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header    Connection      "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header    Host            $host;
        proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-for $remote_addr;
        proxy_connect_timeout 600;
        proxy_read_timeout 86400;
    }

    For UI if you want element on your domain, download and unpack tar.gz from.
    https://github.com/element-hq/element-web/releases

    Point this location to your proxy server ex. openresty / nginx

    location / {
        root /opt/element-v1.11.109;
        index index.html;
    }

    Modify config.json inside /opt/element-v1.11.109 to point location to <your-public-address-subdomain>

    By default it’s using sqlite if you want postgres or other database then modify homeserver.yaml to use postgres

    • captcha_incorrect@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      If you like compose files: https://www.composerize.com/

      docker run -it --rm -v <your-data-path>:/data -e SYNAPSE_SERVER_NAME=<your-public-address-subdomain> -e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no matrixdotorg/synapse:v1.136.0 generate:

      name: <your project name>
services:
    synapse:
        stdin_open: true
        tty: true
        volumes:
            - <your-data-path>:/data
        environment:
            - SYNAPSE_SERVER_NAME=<your-public-address-subdomain>
            - SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no
        image: matrixdotorg/synapse:v1.136.0
        command: generate

      docker run -d --restart=always --name synapse -e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no -v <your-data-path>:/data -p 8008:8008 matrixdotorg/synapse:v1.136.0:

      name: <your project name>
services:
    synapse:
        restart: always
        container_name: synapse
        environment:
            - SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=no
        volumes:
            - <your-data-path>:/data
        ports:
            - 8008:8008
        image: matrixdotorg/synapse:v1.136.0
          • vane@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            15 hours ago

            I have a git repo with some directory convention and bash scripts. Ex stop is just

            #!/bin/bash
name=synapse
docker stop $name
docker rm $name

            etc. depending on what actions I need to do against container I have bash script for that and if I need to perform same action against other container I just copy paste this file and change name variable. I pull this repo to my containers host and just type ./bin/synapse/stop and I stop synapse.

            Hope that makes sense.

    • a_fancy_kiwi@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Out of curiosity, what makes it better?

      A quick search says it’s a package manger for kubernetes. Besides plex, everything I selfhost is just for me. Would you say helm/kubernetes is worth looking into for a hobbyist who doesn’t work in the tech field?

      • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I deal with kubernetes daily for my job and it manages to melt my brain at least a few times a week. It’s not bad… it’s actually great… it’s just… a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

        For what it’s worth, I do not use it at home, because I prefer to be getting paid when my brain is melting.

      • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Kubernetes is much more complicated and powerful than Docker, and Docker Compose is more similar to the way you work directly with Kubernetes than it is to Helm, which adds in a templating system. Basically, from a Docker perspective, Helm allows you to configure your compose file, but not just by substituting variables. Helm can make structural changes such as completely adding or removing sections based on the variables used when loading the chart. The output of Helm is YAML, sort of like a compose file.

        Kubernetes has a much more complicated system for describing workloads and their resources than Docker Compose, and it is extensible. For example, if you are running on AWS you can have Kubernetes attach EBS volumes to your pods, or if you’re on bare metal you might use LVM, and it’s not limited to things that Kubernetes natively understands like storage volumes: Cert Manager is a common piece of software that is deployed into Kubernetes that takes care of issuing and renewing TLS certificates for other software in Kubernetes.

        I used to run Kubernetes at home with ArgoCD, but I’ve moved on to NixOS instead. NixOS is less powerful because it doesn’t have dynamic workload scheduling, but I don’t actually need dynamic workload scheduling or all the configuration necessary to facilitate dynamic workload scheduling in my house, and Nix is much nicer to work with than Helm’s gotmpl templating. Unless you like this kind of stuff or want to get into Kubernetes, you probably want to avoid it for running a few things on one host.

    • a_fancy_kiwi@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Fair criticism. I just don’t have a lot of free time. I can invest in Element but I wanted to crowd source information to see if it was worth it or if there was an easier way. It doesn’t get much easier than Docker