A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Forget about synapse and the "official" method. Install Continuwuity a matrix server written in rust, much much more efficient than synapse.
I took some notes while installing it here https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=matrix%3Aconduwuit
I didn't use docker but directly installation is very easy, it's a single executable.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CSAM | Child Sexual Abuse Material |
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| LVM | (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
| TLS | Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
| XMPP | Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging |
| k8s | Kubernetes container management package |
| nginx | Popular HTTP server |
9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
[Thread #85 for this comm, first seen 12th Feb 2026, 01:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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
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
I don't like compose files :)
How do you manage your containers?
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.
Have you considered replace the name with input from stdin? So instead of name=synapse you could do name=$1 and have one script to use for all containers.
yeah but I don't mind having duplicated scripts, it's just easier to go to single script and don't have to worry about everything else, I keep them like bin/synapse/run, bin/synapse/stop, bin/synapse/logs etc. What I haven't figured out is better way to keep all ports in one place instead of ports.md file but on the other hand it's not like I have thousands of containers running.
it’s not like I have thousands of containers running
I feel you. I have ~20 container files (some are multiple containers in one file, e.g. db and web server) and I seldom have to do changes to them. Once properly configured, I don't really have to do anything.