Installing corporate messenger Conduwuit

Creating a server for Conduwuit

First, let's create a server on Ubuntu 22.04 OS to deploy Conduwuit on it. In our case, a VIEs-1 plan server in Vienna is used.

Preparing the server for Conduwuit installation

After activating your server, connect to it via SSH to install Conduwuit. For more details on how to connect to the server via SSH, see this article.

After connecting via SSH, we will update packages and install curl, as well as install Docker:

apt-get update && apt-get install curl sudo
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo bash

After that, in a convenient directory for you on the server, create the conduwuit directory and go to it:

mkdir /conduwuit
cd /conduwuit

In this directory, we need to create two files docker-compose.yml and .env

First, let's create the docker-compose.yml file:

nano docker-compose.yml

The following content must be copied to the file:

services:
  matrix:
    image: docker.io/girlbossceo/conduwuit:main
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:8008:8008
    environment:
      CONDUWUIT_SERVER_NAME: "${SERVER_NAME}"
      CONDUWUIT_DATABASE_BACKEND: "rocksdb"
      CONDUWUIT_DATABASE_PATH: "/var/lib/conduwuit/"
      CONDUWUIT_PORT: "8008"
      CONDUWUIT_ADDRESS: "0.0.0.0"
      CONDUWUIT_ALLOW_REGISTRATION: "${ALLOW_REGISTRATION:-false}"
      CONDUWUIT_REGISTRATION_TOKEN: "${REGISTRATION_TOKEN:-}"
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/conduwuit/

volumes:
  db:

Then save the file and exit it.

To create the second file, we first need to generate REGISTRATION_TOKEN, we will do this with the command:

cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1

After executing the command, a generated string will be displayed in the console, which we will specify in the .env file:

In our case, the string was generated: ugcHxsLLrKUl27GNBnQvC1gZkuQ4kBNe

Next, let's create the .env file:

nano .env

The following content must be copied to the file:

SERVER_NAME=example.com
ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true
REGISTRATION_TOKEN=<random>

Then save the .env file and close it.

Issuing SSL certificate for your domain and configuring proxy server

For the Conduwuit server to work, you need to issue an SSL certificate for your used domain. We will issue our own certificate using certbot.

First, you need to install certbot on the server:

apt-get install certbot -y

After installation, we will issue a certificate for your domain with the command:

certbot certonly --rsa-key-size 2048 --standalone --agree-tos --no-eff-email --email email@customer -d matrix.your-domain.example

After successfully executing the command, you can view the files of the issued certificate with the command, where "your-domain.example" is the name of your domain:

ls -la /etc/letsencrypt/live/matrix.your-domain.example/

Now you need to configure the proxy server, we will use Nginx for this. First, install it on the server:

apt-get install nginx -y

Then create configuration files. Execute the command:

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/conduwuit

Copy the proxy configuration example to the file:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name matrix.<domain>;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    server_name matrix.<domain>;

    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/conduwuit.access.log;
    error_log   /var/log/nginx/conduwuit.error.log;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/matrix.<domain>/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/matrix.<domain>/privkey.pem;

    location /_matrix {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8008;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
        # Nginx by default only allows file uploads up to 1M in size
        # Increase client_max_body_size to match max_upload_size defined in homeserver.yaml
        client_max_body_size 10M;
    }
}

After that, create a symbolic link:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/conduwuit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

And check the Nginx configuration:

nginx -t

If the check did not pass successfully, check if you correctly created the configuration files according to the sample with your domain specified.

After successful config check, restart Nginx and enable autostart for it:

systemctl restart nginx
systemctl enable nginx

Starting Conduwuit

After completing server configuration, issuing SSL certificate and deploying the proxy server, we can start our docker container with Conduwuit. To do this, it's enough to go to the conduwuit folder where you created two files (in our case, this is the /root/conduwuit/ directory, you can go to it with the command: cd /root/conduwuit/) and execute the command:

docker compose up -d

Check if the container appeared and its status:

docker compose up -d

Connecting to Conduwuit

You can use various clients suitable for communication in the Matrix ecosystem: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

Including web clients that do not require installation of additional software, for example: https://app.element.io/#/login After going to the link, you need to change the server address to which the connection is made:

Then enter the address of your domain that you used to deploy your own Conduwuit server and confirm with the "Continue" button:

After that, you need to create an account on our server:

Then enter the data to create an account:

Then you will need to enter the registration token specified in the config:

After that, you will see a welcome window with tips:

You can skip them with the "Skip" button and then you get to the main menu with dialogs and management: