# Matrix synapse
Author: Xiaoming Guo
## Introduction
Matrix is an ambitious new ecosystem for open federated Instant Messaging and VoIP. The basics you need to know to get up and running are:

Everything in Matrix happens in a room. Rooms are distributed and do not exist on any single server. Rooms can be located using convenience aliases like #matrix:matrix.org or #test:localhost:8448.
Matrix user IDs look like @matthew:matrix.org (although in the future you will normally refer to yourself and others using a third party identifier (3PID): email address, phone number, etc rather than manipulating Matrix user IDs)
The overall architecture is:

                  How data flows between clients
                  ==============================

      { Alice }                                      
    ^          |                                    
    |  events  |  Client-Server API                 
    |          V                                    
+------------------+                            
|                  |--------->
|   homeserver     |  events  { Bob }
|                  |<---------
+------------------+    

                  How data flows between clients
                  ==============================

      { Alice }                                        { Bob }
    ^          |                                    ^          |
    |  events  |  Client-Server API                 |  events  |
    |          V                                    |          V
+------------------+                            +------------------+
|                  |---------( HTTPS )--------->|                  |
|   homeserver     |                            |   homeserver     |
|                  |<--------( HTTPS )----------|                  |
+------------------+      Server-Server API     +------------------+
                       History Synchronisation
                           (Federation)

### 1:1 voice or video call

                     1:1 call is peer to peer
     { Alice }  <---------------------------------->   { Bob }
    ^          |                                    ^          |
    |  events  |  Client-Server API                 |  events  |
    |          V                                    |          V
+------------------+                            +------------------+
|                  |---------( HTTPS )--------->|                  |
|   homeserver     |                            |   homeserver     |
|                  |<--------( HTTPS )----------|                  |
+------------------+      Server-Server API     +------------------+
                       History Synchronisation
                           (Federation)

### Conference voice or video call

      { Alice }  <-------------------------------------       
          ^                                            |
          |                                            |
          V                                            V
+------------------+                             +------------------+      
|                  | <------- { Bob } ---------> |                  |
|   Jisti Server   |                             |    homeserver    |
|                  | <------- { Carol } -------> |                  |
+------------------+                             +------------------+

Github: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse
Clients: https://matrix.org/clients/ or https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now/
## Install on Ubuntu virtual machine
### System requirements
* POSIX-compliant system (tested on Linux & OS X)
* Python 3.5.2 or later, up to Python 3.8.
* At least 1GB of free RAM
### Install Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine on virtualbox
* Install virtualbox on your host machine
* Download the ubuntu 18.04 image
* Create a new ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine via virtualbox UI
* After the ubuntu virtual machine gets created, install openssh-server and necessary packages
### Prerequisites
* https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/INSTALL.md#debianubunturaspbian

    sudo apt install openssh-server python-pip virtualenv \
        build-essential python3-dev libffi-dev \
        python3-pip python3-setuptools sqlite3 \
        libssl-dev python3-virtualenv libjpeg-dev libxslt1-dev

* Choose the DNS names
* ubuntu.com (general website, and for hosting a .well-known path to advertise Matrix)
* synapse.ubuntu.com (Synapse)
### Install Nginx
* `sudo apt-get update && sudo apt -y install nginx`
* Setup reverse proxy to synapse server

    sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
    
    sudo cat > /etc/nginx/sites-available/synapse.ubuntu.com << EOF
    server {
       listen 8108;
       listen [::]:8108;

       location / {
               proxy_pass http://localhost:8008;
       }
    }
    EOF
    
    sudo systemctl restart nginx

* (Skip) Enable TLS via LetsEncrypt on nginx

    sudo apt install -y python3-certbot-nginx
    sudo certbot --nginx -d ubuntu.com -d synapse.ubuntu.com

### Setup matrix
#### Install matrix

mkdir -p ~/synapse
virtualenv -p python3 ~/synapse/env
source ~/synapse/env/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install matrix-synapse

Sample output:

(env) synapse-vm@synapsevm-VirtualBox:~$ pip install --upgrade pip
Requirement already up-to-date: pip in ./synapse/env/lib/python3.6/site-packages (20.0.2)
(env) synapse-vm@synapsevm-VirtualBox:~$ pip install --upgrade setuptools
Requirement already up-to-date: setuptools in ./synapse/env/lib/python3.6/site-packages (46.1.3)
(env) synapse-vm@synapsevm-VirtualBox:~$ pip install matrix-synapse
Collecting matrix-synapse
  Downloading matrix-synapse-1.12.0.tar.gz (2.1 MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 2.1 MB 2.0 MB/s
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
    Preparing wheel metadata ... done
Collecting bcrypt>=3.1.0
  Downloading bcrypt-3.1.7-cp34-abi3-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (56 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 56 kB 2.3 MB/s
Collecting netaddr>=0.7.18
  Downloading netaddr-0.7.19-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.6 MB)
...
Successfully installed Automat-20.2.0 Jinja2-2.11.1 MarkupSafe-1.1.1 PyHamcrest-2.0.2 Twisted-20.3.0 attrs-19.3.0 bcrypt-3.1.7 bleach-3.1.4 canonicaljson-1.1.4 certifi-2019.11.28 cffi-1.14.0 chardet-3.0.4 constantly-15.1.0 cryptography-2.8 daemonize-2.5.0 frozendict-1.2 hyperlink-19.0.0 idna-2.9 importlib-metadata-1.6.0 incremental-17.5.0 jsonschema-3.2.0 matrix-synapse-1.12.0 msgpack-1.0.0 netaddr-0.7.19 phonenumbers-8.12.0 pillow-7.0.0 prometheus-client-0.7.1 pyasn1-0.4.8 pyasn1-modules-0.2.8 pycparser-2.20 pymacaroons-0.13.0 pynacl-1.3.0 pyopenssl-19.1.0 pyrsistent-0.16.0 pyyaml-5.3.1 requests-2.23.0 service-identity-18.1.0 signedjson-1.1.1 simplejson-3.17.0 six-1.14.0 sortedcontainers-2.1.0 treq-20.3.0 typing-extensions-3.7.4.1 unpaddedbase64-1.1.0 urllib3-1.25.8 webencodings-0.5.1 zipp-3.1.0 zope.interface-5.0.1

#### Generate config YAML
After the intallation, you need to generate the configuration file. Modify the homeserver.yaml if necessary.

cd ~/synapse
python -m synapse.app.homeserver --server-name synapsevm.demo.com --config-path homeserver.yaml --generate-config --report-stats=yes
    
(env) synapse-vm@synapsevm-VirtualBox:~/synapse$ ll
total 84
drwxrwxr-x  3 synapse-vm synapse-vm  4096 Mar 29 22:03 ./
drwxr-xr-x 15 synapse-vm synapse-vm  4096 Mar 29 22:03 ../
drwxrwxr-x  6 synapse-vm synapse-vm  4096 Mar 29 17:17 env/
-rw-rw-r--  1 synapse-vm synapse-vm 63785 Mar 29 20:21 homeserver.yaml
-rw-rw-r--  1 synapse-vm synapse-vm  1123 Mar 29 20:21 synapsevm-VirtualBox.log.config
-rw-rw-r--  1 synapse-vm synapse-vm    59 Mar 29 20:21 synapsevm-VirtualBox.signing.key

#### Start homeserver
To start a new homeserver, run the following:

cd ~/synapse
source env/bin/activate # You do not need to run this if you already activated the virtual env
synctl start

Now you should be able to access the synapse server from browser by using the `http://<vm-ip>:<8001>
#### Regsiter user

cd ~/synapse
source env/bin/activate # You do not need to run this if you already activated the virtual env
register_new_matrix_user -c homeserver.yaml http://localhost:8008

### Setup Jitsi
**Note**: I am doing Jitsi on a seperate vm
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/blob/master/doc/quick-install.md
#### Add the Jitsi package repository

echo 'deb https://download.jitsi.org stable/' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list
wget -qO -  https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

#### Install Jitsi

# Ensure support is available for apt repositories served via HTTPS
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

# Retrieve the latest package versions across all repositories
sudo apt-get update

# Perform jitsi-meet installation
sudo apt-get -y install jitsi-meet

During the installation, you will be asked to enter the hostname of the Jitsi Meet instance. If you have a FQDN for the instance already set up in DNS, enter it there. If you don't have a resolvable hostname, you can enter the IP address of the machine (if it is static or doesn't change).

## References
* https://matrix.org/blog/2020/04/06/running-your-own-secure-communication-service-with-matrix-and-jitsi