I want to selfhost a messaging service for my family. It should be secure and have voice calling option, ideally. Thank you.
From my experience (with Dendrite, not synapse, so keep that in mind), bridges create “fake” users to replicate your contacts on these platform as matrix users, and they are visible on the whole instance by all their users (but you might not be able to talk to them). Also, in puppeted mode (which is what you want to “replace” your app with matrix), only a single user can use the bridge at a time, so the other users cannot use it.
This is true but if you’re self-hosting it’s not that much bother to add additional copies of a bridge for other users (granted, it’s not ideal).
Bridges were not that easy to manage in my case (regarding process management, and ease of config deployment/reproductibility). It was on OpenBSD though, so your mileage may vary. And still, it leaks all of your contact informations to the other users of the server (like their phone number eventually), so definitely not suited for public instances.
Leaks contact information to the other users? Can you elaborate on that? I haven’t heard anything like that
That’s from my own experience. I had a self-hosted matrix server running with Dendrite, and the mautrix-whatsapp bridge running. The bridge was running in puppeted mode, so upon synchronizing contacts, the bridge created “fake” users on the matrix server, one for each of my whatsapp contacts. The matrix username of these contacts is (by default)
whatsapp_<phone_number>:domain.tld. And these users are visible (at least) by other users on the same server. It was my own instance and I was the sole user so I didn’t really care. But when a friend of mine wanted to try matrix, I created an account for him on the server, and when he joined, he could see all the fake whatsapp/telegram/discord users created by the bridge on the server. And as the default username includes the phone number, he basically had access to my whole phone contact list in real time.Very interesting.
https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/8969 This may be of interest- it’s basically the same thing. Seems that before that patch was merged, bridge-created puppet contacts would show up in searches.
Of course that’s for Synapse not Dendrite. So it sounds like Dendrite never applied that same functionality.
I’m on Signal (obviously not self hosted) and even if I really wanted to move to another platform be it self hosted or yet another privacy focussed one, I can’t ask my friends and family to move to another platform again. I already asked them to move away from WhatsApp, can’t do it again…
💯 this. It took me several years to get most of my friends, co-workers and family to Signal…
This is what I told most of my friend when they asked me to move to signal. Is is going to be a very shitty company managed by a shitty egocentric person and you are going to regret. But you will make people move and they won’t do it again and won’t understand the reasons
I host my own matrix instance for my wife, a few friends and I. It has worked great for us. They can either use a web app, or an app on their phone.
Hey , do you have a guide on how to host my own matrix server?
I used the official docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/matrixdotorg/synapse/
My compose file looks like this: https://pastebin.com/3JYzAPr2
Pretty sure I just followed the instructions there.
how have you secured your server when opening your network to the outside?
I’m using a cloudflare tunnel for it. I also have crowdsec installed, only allow ssh keys and only from my IP (I have a static from my ISP), and no ports open other than the ones needed.
Matrix.
Also a vote for Matrix and Synapse. Works great and you can decide if you federate or not.
I like Matrix (I mostly use it with my sister) though XMPP might be a good option too if it’s just for family.
Just for a family and friends I’d go for xmpp. Matrix is still an enormous greavy piece of software, hard to self host if you don’t want to pay for a gigantic server just for it. Also the UI is more like gamer/company chat (discord, slack…), what may not be what your family expect, coming from whatsapp, telegram, or plain sms. In the contrary xmpp is very light and nowadays a lot of tutorial exists on how to configure it, even with voice/video. Plus mobile apps like conversation match the habbits of other messengers.
Another Nextcloud user here. If you setup a Nextcloud server you will see many benefits, with the Talk app being just one of them. Install OnlyOffice and you can even collaboratively edit documents in the web browser similar to Google Docs or o365. I really can’t recommend Nextcloud enough. Anyone who is into self hosting should at least give it a try.
Matrix (synapse server) probably fits the bill.
Nextcloud looks really great and it has a chat / video chat too, I want to give it a spin in the future, as it also allows you to self-host a lot of things that people usually outsource to Microsoft, Google or Apple.
The video calls in nextcloud are a bit…hard to make work flawless, lol. You also need some amount of ram and cpu in the server.
I think you always need some amount of ram and cpu in a server… ;D Well, it’s a shame if those video calls aren’t working nicely without some fiddling. I’ll still set up a Nextcloud at some point, for all that other stuff like calendar, contacts, office, chat and file sync. Kinda enjoying the benefits of cloud synced data, but without a corporation hosting my information and selling me to the advertisement hyenas.
Heh true that. AFAIR Nextcloud Talk Video calls need few additional stuff to be installed for working outside a LAN. You can check some details here: https://nextcloud-talk.readthedocs.io/en/latest/TURN/
I use Nextcloud Talk video calls outside my local LAN and I didn’t do anything special other than install the Talk app.
Nice. Either you are lucky or I’m unlucky :). I have used it with my previous vps which only had 2 GB ram (%94 always full with services and stuff) and 1 core. The experience was not very…convincing. I have yet to test it with my new server though.
My ODroid H3+ running my Nextcloud instance is pretty over-specced, with 32 GB RAM and a 2 TB m.2 SSD, so that might explain the differing results. I’m surprised it runs so poorly on less capable hardware though. I actually have another Nextcloud instance running on a minimally specced VPS. I’ll test Talk on that instance this evening and see if my results are similar to yours.
That will be a good test. It will be greatly appreciated if you post your results here or on a separate thread.
Matrix works, but it’s way harder and more expensive to selfhost than for example XMPP, which can be hosted even on cheapest VPS or first RPi. I would definitely take the cost and “how hard is it to maintain in the long run” into consideration.
Mattermost also works and is pretty easy to selfhost, but it doesn’t have federation.
Another option is always an email with delta.chat - I don’t think it offers voice calling, but email is one of the most basic services one can host, and many automated solutions to help with that exist.
The problem of XMPP is not hosting it, it’s the clients. Give me one easy-to-use guide to have
- e2ee text messaging
- groups
- audio/video calling
working equally well on desktop, Android and iOS, and I will gladly drop my matrix server.
If you’re already using Nextcloud, it has a chat w/ video chat as well.
Matrix / Synapse / Element.io is also pretty cool. The UX might not be on par with what some family expects though. I don’t know if voice/video chat is built-in yet or not, but it was at least an option before.
Voice / video requires a separate TURN server, IIRC.
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Why? Existing platforms, especially the plain cell network, are going to be far more compatible and reliable.
Because this is SelfHosted and hosting services yourself is cool?
Some people have very legitimate reasons to want a secure private communication platform, and others are just enthusiastic nerds who do it for fun.
