Setting up a matrix homeserver for the social dot coop
Hi all! I want to set up a matrix homeserver for social.coop. I've been meaning to play around with matrix for awhile now, and this seems like the perfect opportunity to do so. I was planning on just selfhosting it myself, since the server costs are free, but I'd need to get a subdomain pointed at my ip and i'm not sure who I should talk to about that. I was thinking either chat.social.coop or matrix.social.coop, although I don't really have a preference.
As for the financial aspect, I'm more than happy to host it for free for now, since it doesn't cost me anything besides the time it takes to set it up and I wanna learn the nitty gritty of the matrix protocol anyways. If it blows up and everyone starts using it, we can figure out a more permanent hosting setup then, but there's not much of a point in hashing all that out before we even know if people will use it.
ps: this is my first loomio thread and i'm still gettin the hang of it, so apologies if i forgot to do something or did something wrong.
Poll Created Fri 11 May 2018 12:21AM
possible sub.domains to host a matrix homeserver at. Closed Fri 11 May 2018 10:01PM
chat.social.coop got 5 votes, not sure what that means tho
Results
| Results | Option | Rank | % of points | Points | Mean | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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chat.social.coop | 1 | 33.3% | 10 | 3.3 | ||
|
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matrix.social.coop | 2 | 30.0% | 9 | 3.0 | ||
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riot.social.coop | 3 | 23.3% | 7 | 2.3 | ||
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gossip.social.coop | 4 | 13.3% | 4 | 1.3 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 0 | 0 |
3 of 20 people have voted (15%)
[deactivated account] Fri 11 May 2018 12:24AM
| 1 - matrix.social.coop | ||
| 2 - chat.social.coop | ||
| 3 - riot.social.coop | ||
| 4 - gossip.social.coop |
woah this is snazzy
Matt Noyes Fri 11 May 2018 3:33PM
| 1 - riot.social.coop | ||
| 2 - matrix.social.coop | ||
| 3 - chat.social.coop | ||
| 4 - gossip.social.coop |
This is great. This is a collective effort, so it should be clear that admin decisions should be made in this working group. Also, it seems good to put this to the membership, both to advertise it and because it is a change to our infrastructure.
[deactivated account] Fri 11 May 2018 12:28AM
wait, the poll is for three days? cause getting this up and running was kinda my plans for the evening haha. maybe I could just get a subdomain for testing, and then switch it over to the winner once the poll's done? that should be enough time to work out any kinks with federating and stuff, too
Liaizon Wakest Fri 11 May 2018 12:44AM
it was just the default time for poll length. I assume we can change it.
Liaizon Wakest Fri 11 May 2018 12:48AM
yeah I just changed it. can be anytime.
Michele Kipiel Sat 12 May 2018 10:42AM
Just remember to share the result of the poll as soon as it's done! :)
Darren Fri 11 May 2018 1:10AM
I really like matrix and have been using it a lot over the last two years.
I am not sure that running a server is a great idea at the moment. The
folks at disroot.org and weho.st both provide various free web services
but I am pretty sure that for both of them looking after matrix takes
much more time than all the time they spend on all the other services
that they offer combined. Also takes a fair bit of server resources to
run once the users build up a bit and time passes - the database gets
BIG and IIRC it also needs a surprising amount of RAM.
Think it tends to be problems due to the huge number of users on
matrix.org, also the many IRC channels (some with loads of users) which
are bridged into the matrix network via that homeserver to users
elsewhere. If there are issues at matrix.org and federation slows other
servers really suffer when it picks up the pace again.
Maybe worth having a chat with them about your idea, they are all super
helpful and friendly - #disroot:disroot.org (realitygaps one of the
folks behind weho.st also hangs out there)
Mayel de Borniol Fri 11 May 2018 10:11AM
I set up a matrix server once, and found that there's was a combination of fiddly tricks that allowed to host matrix on a subdomain like matrix.domain.com but have the usernames be on the main domain @user:domain.com
Seems like it would be worth trying to do this, and also hooking this up with our membership database/app so that members have the same username on Matrix as they have on Mastodon.
Liaizon Wakest Fri 11 May 2018 1:25PM
That would be incredible. I wonder if we can just use the mastodon accounts as OpenID type logins for Matrix. Haven't looked into whether anyone has created a system like that yet for Riot but I assume someone is probably working on it.
Michele Kipiel Fri 11 May 2018 1:30PM
hooking this up with our membership database/app so that members have the same username on Matrix as they have on Mastodon
This would be awesome!
spudboy Fri 1 Jun 2018 5:53PM
matrix supports ldap, not sure about mastodon
spudboy Fri 1 Jun 2018 5:54PM
i'd also suggest using the open source integration manager Dimension, rather than the default one. i'm a pretty active matrix user, feel free to ping me with any questions
Antoine-Frédéric Raquin Wed 6 Jun 2018 11:12AM
Why not a rocket.chat server? Unless you want federation with other servers, I don't really see the point of Matrix over rocket.chat here.
I don't understand if we're doing this for internal use or to discuss with everyone, but if the latter were correct I'd probably give it a try.
spudboy Fri 8 Jun 2018 8:11PM
federation would be important because it connects us to the wider world
Liaizon Wakest Fri 8 Jun 2018 9:41AM
@gregcerna were you still wanting to do this?
spudboy Fri 8 Jun 2018 8:12PM
i'd be willing to spend time and effort on the matrix server. i would like our eventual Code of Conduct to apply to matrix too, I don't like the idea of willingly hosting hate speech or other extreme content.
[deactivated account] Sun 10 Jun 2018 6:16PM
sorry it took so long (shit hit the fan at my housing co-op this past month, and i've been dealing with the fallout) but I finally got a test matrix synapse server up and running and successfully federating!
the web client (riot) url is https://chat.socialcoop.frenchha.us (sign up here)
the matrix server url is https://matrix.socialcoop.frenchha.us
this is just a test server, since you can't change the server url once you've started to federate. we'll have to start fresh when we switch urls to chat.social.coop, so in the meantime, feel free to create an account, try out riot (or any other client), and explore the matrixverse!
[deactivated account] Sun 10 Jun 2018 6:31PM
also, re: rocketchat - i'm already hosting four different rocketchats lol, for different houses/groups within ICC, but I'd be happy to host another one (rocketchat is super lightweight) and can probs set up a new one in under an hour if you'd like to try that out too. the rocketchat interface (rocketchat is an unabashed slack clone) is waaaay better than riot's godawful UI, but it lacks federation, which is frustrating. there were plans to federate using the matrix protocol (https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Federation) but it hasn't been touched in awhile. if i had to guess why, i'd say it was because the rocketchat team has been super focused on improving the quality of their ios/android apps - they've gone from pretty terrible a couple months ago to surprisingly pretty solid - which, imo, was the right choice, because federation doesn't matter if no one wants to use it, and riot's overengineered UI makes wide adoption of matrix beyond nerds a non-starter.
Liaizon Wakest · Fri 11 May 2018 12:22AM
Totally down to help with this in anyway I can.