element-docker-demo

element-docker-demo is a minimal example of how to rapidly stand up a Matrix 2.0 stack on macOS or Linux using Docker, featuring:

• Element Web
• Element Call
• Synapse
• Matrix Authentication Service
• LiveKit
• Postgres
• nginx + letsencrypt / mkcert for TLS.

This is not intended for serious production usage, but instead as a tool for curious sysadmins to easily experiment with Matrix 2.0 in a simple docker compose environment. As of Nov 2024, it's considered beta.

In particular, this has:

• No support, security or maintenance guarantees whatsoever
• No high availability, horizontal scalability, elastic scaling, clustering, backup etc.
• No admin interface
• No monitoring
• No fancy config management (eg ansible), just env vars and templates
• No fancy secret management (stored in plaintext on disk)
• No UDP traffic or TURN for LiveKit (all traffic is tunnelled over TCP for simplicity)
• No push server, integration manager, integrations, or identity lookup server

For production-grade Matrix from Element, please see https://element.io/server-suite (ESS).

To run

1. Install Docker Compose.
2. If you're running on your local workstation, then install mkcert to manage TLS.

Then:

./setup.sh

# Point DNS for *.domain at your docker host,
# Or if running on localhost with mkcert:
# source .env; sudo sh -c "echo 127.0.0.1 $DOMAINS >> /etc/hosts"

docker compose up
# go to https://element on your domain.

Watch the full video:

For more info, see https://element.io/blog/experimenting-with-matrix-2-0-using-element-docker-demo/

To configure

Check the .env file, or customise the templates in /data-templates and then docker compose down && docker compose up -d.

In particular, you may wish to:

• Point at your own SMTP server rather than mailhog
• Use your own reverse proxy rather than the provided nginx
• Use your own database cluster

Container data gets stored in ./data, and secrets in ./secrets. N.B. that config files in ./data will get overwritten by the templates from ./data-template every time the cluster is launched.

To admin

# To register a user
docker compose exec mas mas-cli -c /data/config.yaml manage register-user

Diagnostics

# check that OIDC is working - useful for debugging TLS problems
docker compose exec mas mas-cli -c /data/config.yaml doctor

Other resources

• This was originally based on https://github.com/element-hq/synapse/tree/master/contrib/docker_compose_workers
• Other guides for MAS and Element Call from Sebastian Späth at:
  • https://sspaeth.de/2024/08/matrix-server-with-nextcloud-login/
  • https://sspaeth.de/2024/11/sfu/
• https://cyberhost.uk/element-matrix-setup/ is a good Matrix 1.0 docker-compose guide too

Todo

• mention this from synapse/contrib/docker*
• pop up https://element in your browser once synapse has started up successfully for the first time, perhaps
• test $VOLUME_PATH (or remove it)
• swap nginx for caddy or traefik to simplify Letsencrypt
• set up livekit TURN (tcp & udp port 443) for better firewall traversal and voip performance