Self Host Matrix And Element Via Docker Compose

Following this guide and you see errors related to the matrix_postgres_1 container and that it is looking for C in Collate and Ctype as opposed to UTF8. Firstly stop the container. You can access the postgres DB via –> docker exec -it matrix_postgres_1 bash –> su root –> su - postgres (if that does not work, then the postgres user)P --> psql -U synapse`
Once that is done, go into the postgres DB as the synapse user with \c postgres and then drop the synapse DB with DROP DATABASE synapse;. When that is done, recreate the Database with CREATE DATABASE synapse WITH LC_CTYPE = 'C' LC_COLLATE='C' TEMPLATE='template0';

Server Setup Update your OS and make sure everything is ready

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade UFW Firewall Lets make sure ports 80 and 443 are open on UFW

sudo ufw allow 80/tcp sudo ufw allow 443/tcp Install Docker & Docker-Compose curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh sh get-docker.sh apt-get install python3 python3-pip -y pip3 install docker-compose Prepare our compose file Create a matrix folder, in this folder create a docker-compose.yml file with the following contents:

version: ‘2.3’ services: postgres: image: postgres:14 restart: unless-stopped volumes: - ./postgresdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

# These will be used in homeserver.yaml later on
environment:
 - POSTGRES_DB=synapse
 - POSTGRES_USER=synapse
 - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=STRONGPASSWORD

element: image: vectorim/element-web:latest restart: unless-stopped volumes: - ./element-config.json:/app/config.json

synapse: image: matrixdotorg/synapse:latest restart: unless-stopped volumes: - ./synapse:/data Don’t forget to change the Postgres password on this file to a secure password.

Now on the same folder create a config file for the elements clients, named element-config.json.

Copy the example file from Elements.io into your own config file, and adjust the following settings:

Add our own homeserver at the top of the file:

“default_server_config”: { “m.homeserver”: { “base_url”: “https://matrix.example.com”, “server_name”: “matrix.example.com” }, “m.identity_server”: { “base_url”: “https://vector.im” } }, Generate Synapse config Now its time to generate the initial config of our synapse server, run the following command to do so:

sudo docker run -it –rm
-v “$HOME/matrix/synapse:/data”
-e SYNAPSE_SERVER_NAME=matrix.example.com
-e SYNAPSE_REPORT_STATS=yes
matrixdotorg/synapse:latest generate Configuring Synapse Now lets adjust the freshly generated synapse config to our needs

Edit the synapse/homeserver.yaml file as follows:

Comment-out the SQLite database:

#database:

name: sqlite3

args:

database: /data/homeserver.db

And now add our Postgres database:

database: name: psycopg2 args: user: synapse password: STRONGPASSWORD database: synapse host: postgres cp_min: 5 cp_max: 10 Spin it up! Time to get things moving, spin-up your docker stack:

sudo docker-compose up -d Create our first (admin) user sudo docker exec -it matrix_synapse_1 bash register_new_matrix_user -c /data/homeserver.yaml http://localhost:8008 Follow the on-screen instructions to create your first user

Install Caddy Reverse Proxy Caddy will be used for the reverse proxy. This will handle incomming HTTPS connections and forward them to the correct docker containers. It a simple setup process and Caddy will automatically fetch and renew Let’s Encrypt certificates for us!

First head over to our user directory

cd ~ Install Caddy:

sudo apt install caddy -y Create a Caddy file:

sudo nano Caddyfile Paste the following config:

matrix.example.com { reverse_proxy /_matrix/* 10.10.10.4:8008 reverse_proxy /_synapse/client/* 10.10.10.4:8008

header { X-Content-Type-Options nosniff Referrer-Policy strict-origin-when-cross-origin Strict-Transport-Security “max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains;” Permissions-Policy “accelerometer=(), camera=(), geolocation=(), gyroscope=(), magnetometer=(), microphone=(), payment=(), usb=(), interest-cohort=()” X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN X-XSS-Protection 1 X-Robots-Tag none -server } }

element.example.com { encode zstd gzip reverse_proxy 10.10.10.3:80

Reload Caddy

caddy reload