Project Idea
Matrix is an open source chat protocol that allows for secure and decentralized communication. This gives you full control over your data and a secure and private communication option with your friends, family or colleagues. The matrix project consists of a big community, that contributes to several server implementations and various clients you can choose from.
Description
About matrix.org
Matrix is an open‑standard, decentralized real‑time communication protocol for messaging, VoIP, and VoIP signaling.
Requirements
- Domain
- Server (e.g. Raspberry Pi with min. 2 GB RAM or third-party VPS)
- SSL certificate (e.g. via Let's Encrypt)
- backup solution (backup server/repository)
Docker services
- matrix conduit: lightweight matrix server
- nginx (with acme-companion): reverse proxy for traffic routing (including automatic SSL certificate management)
- kopia: backup management
- (tar-backup: script to dump the database to the kopia backup folder)
Documentation
matrix conduit
Matrix conduit is a lightweight [matrix] homeserver implementation written in Rust. It is simpler than Synapse and therefore easy to set up. However, it is still in active development and does not yet support all features e. g. the api commands for room management are not yet implemented. But for basic chat functionality it works well.
nginx
Nginx is a reverse proxy that forwards requests to the matrix server and serves the server's endpoint.
kopia
For regular database backup creation kopia is used. It offers user-controlled end-to-end encryption, deduplication
and compression. It can run scheduled backups and offers custom retention policies. Additionally,
it includes a web-interface where the configuration can be set in a graphical user interface.
Furthermore, kopia is fast. In a
benchmark
test kopia performed faster than restic (probably the most common backup tool) in most scenarios.
Connect with a client
When the server infrastructure is set up and running, it is time to connect to the matrix server via a client. There exist several matrix clients with different features and designs. You can choose one of your choice. When signing up, instead of using the default option "matrix.org", you need to specify your servers URL to connect to your private server. After creating an account you can start chatting with other people that are registered on any matrix protocol based server. Below, you can see the signup mask of the popular matrix client Element.
