fly-apps/dendrite

Matrix Homeserver on fly.io

Quick notes on how to run dendrite for a small scale Matrix homeserver on fly.io with sqlite storage.

Requirements

• A domain name where you can create/change A, AAAA and SRV records
• A fly.io account and the flyctl cli installed
• Docker or similar container runtime installed

Preparations

For federation (talking to other homeservers), your server needs is a matrix server key.

Generate the server key using either the dendrite container:

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/key -w /key --entrypoint /usr/bin/generate-keys matrixdotorg/dendrite-monolith:latest --private-key matrix_key.pem

or the generate-keys app:

go run github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/cmd/generate-keys \
  --private-key=matrix_key.pem \
  --tls-cert=server.crt \
  --tls-key=server.key

Do not loose this key!

Next, make copy the dendrite-sample.in.yaml to dentrite.in.yaml and change the global.server_name to your desired domain.

Finally, change the app = "dendrite-on-fly" line in fly.toml to an app name of your desire.

Deployment

Choose your Fly.io region (flyctl platform regions) and edit the fly.toml file. Create a 10GB persistent volume mount in your desired region.

flyctl volumes create dendrite_data --region bos --size 10

Now you simply can deploy dendrite using

flyctl deploy

Secrets

flyctl secrets set "DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@hostname/database?params=..."
flyctl secrets set "REGISTRATION_SHARED_SECRET="
base64 -w0 matrix_key.pem | flyctl secrets set MATRIX_KEY_PEM=-

Domain configuration

After deployment, execute flyctl info to obtain the IP addresses your app runs on.

Use these IPs to create A and AAAA records for the domain name you configured in dendrite.yaml

Usually matrix federates on port 8448, but it is possible to use a SRV record to specify a different port (8443 in our case).

Create a SRV record at _matrix._tcp.<the-original-domain> with values 10 10 8443 <the-original-domain>

It is possible to test federation with the Matrix federation tester.

Once you have set up the A and AAAA records, obtain a TLS certificate using flyctl

flyctl certs add <hostname>

You now can create accounts on your homeserver and start chatting with people.

Still to figure out

• How to backup your sqlite file

Useful information

• flyctl v0.0.181 and dendrite v0.3.11 were used