Conduit for Docker

Note: To run and use Conduit you should probably use it with a Domain or Subdomain behind a reverse proxy (like Nginx, Traefik, Apache, ...) with a Lets Encrypt certificate.

Docker

To run Conduit with Docker you can either build the image yourself or pull it from a registry.

Use a registry

OCI images for Conduit are available in the registries listed below. We recommend using the image tagged as latest from GitLab's own registry.

Registry	Image	Size	Notes
GitLab Registry	registry.gitlab.com/famedly/conduit/matrix-conduit:latest		Stable image.
Docker Hub	docker.io/matrixconduit/matrix-conduit:latest		Stable image.
GitLab Registry	registry.gitlab.com/famedly/conduit/matrix-conduit:next		Development version.
Docker Hub	docker.io/matrixconduit/matrix-conduit:next		Development version.

Use

docker image pull <link>

to pull it to your machine.

Build using a dockerfile

The Dockerfile provided by Conduit has two stages, each of which creates an image.

1. Builder: Builds the binary from local context or by cloning a git revision from the official repository.
2. Runner: Copies the built binary from Builder and sets up the runtime environment, like creating a volume to persist the database and applying the correct permissions.

To build the image you can use the following command

docker build --tag matrixconduit/matrix-conduit:latest .

which also will tag the resulting image as matrixconduit/matrix-conduit:latest.

Run

When you have the image you can simply run it with

docker run -d -p 8448:6167 \
  -v db:/var/lib/matrix-conduit/ \
  -e CONDUIT_SERVER_NAME="your.server.name" \
  -e CONDUIT_DATABASE_BACKEND="rocksdb" \
  -e CONDUIT_ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true \
  -e CONDUIT_ALLOW_FEDERATION=true \
  -e CONDUIT_MAX_REQUEST_SIZE="20000000" \
  -e CONDUIT_TRUSTED_SERVERS="[\"matrix.org\"]" \
  -e CONDUIT_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQUESTS="100" \
  --name conduit <link>

or you can use docker compose.

The -d flag lets the container run in detached mode. You now need to supply a conduit.toml config file, an example can be found here. You can pass in different env vars to change config values on the fly. You can even configure Conduit completely by using env vars, but for that you need to pass -e CONDUIT_CONFIG="" into your container. For an overview of possible values, please take a look at the docker-compose.yml file.

If you just want to test Conduit for a short time, you can use the --rm flag, which will clean up everything related to your container after you stop it.

Docker compose

If the docker run command is not for you or your setup, you can also use one of the provided docker compose files.

Depending on your proxy setup, you can use one of the following files;

• If you already have a traefik instance set up, use docker-compose.for-traefik.yml
• If you don't have a traefik instance set up (or any other reverse proxy), use docker-compose.with-traefik.yml
• For any other reverse proxy, use docker-compose.yml

When picking the traefik-related compose file, rename it so it matches docker-compose.yml, and rename the override file to docker-compose.override.yml. Edit the latter with the values you want for your server. Additional info about deploying Conduit can be found here.

Build

To build the Conduit image with docker compose, you first need to open and modify the docker-compose.yml file. There you need to comment the image: option and uncomment the build: option. Then call docker compose with:

docker compose up

This will also start the container right afterwards, so if want it to run in detached mode, you also should use the -d flag.

Run

If you already have built the image or want to use one from the registries, you can just start the container and everything else in the compose file in detached mode with:

docker compose up -d

Note: Don't forget to modify and adjust the compose file to your needs.

Use Traefik as Proxy

As a container user, you probably know about Traefik. It is a easy to use reverse proxy for making containerized app and services available through the web. With the two provided files, docker-compose.for-traefik.yml (or docker-compose.with-traefik.yml) and docker-compose.override.yml, it is equally easy to deploy and use Conduit, with a little caveat. If you already took a look at the files, then you should have seen the well-known service, and that is the little caveat. Traefik is simply a proxy and loadbalancer and is not able to serve any kind of content, but for Conduit to federate, we need to either expose ports 443 and 8448 or serve two endpoints .well-known/matrix/client and .well-known/matrix/server.

With the service well-known we use a single nginx container that will serve those two files.

So...step by step:

1. Copy docker-compose.for-traefik.yml (or docker-compose.with-traefik.yml) and docker-compose.override.yml from the repository and remove .for-traefik (or .with-traefik) from the filename.

2. Open both files and modify/adjust them to your needs. Meaning, change the CONDUIT_SERVER_NAME and the volume host mappings according to your needs.

3. Create the conduit.toml config file, an example can be found here, or set CONDUIT_CONFIG="" and configure Conduit per env vars.

4. Uncomment the element-web service if you want to host your own Element Web Client and create a element_config.json.

5. Create the files needed by the well-known service.

   • ./nginx/matrix.conf (relative to the compose file, you can change this, but then also need to change the volume mapping)

     server {
         server_name <SUBDOMAIN>.<DOMAIN>;
         listen      80 default_server;
     
         location /.well-known/matrix/server {
            return 200 '{"m.server": "<SUBDOMAIN>.<DOMAIN>:443"}';
            types { } default_type "application/json; charset=utf-8";
         }
     
        location /.well-known/matrix/client {
            return 200 '{"m.homeserver": {"base_url": "https://<SUBDOMAIN>.<DOMAIN>"}}';
            types { } default_type "application/json; charset=utf-8";
            add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" *;
        }
     
        location / {
            return 404;
        }
     }
     

6. Run docker compose up -d

7. Connect to your homeserver with your preferred client and create a user. You should do this immediately after starting Conduit, because the first created user is the admin.

Voice communication

In order to make or receive calls, a TURN server is required. Conduit suggests using Coturn for this purpose, which is also available as a Docker image. Before proceeding with the software installation, it is essential to have the necessary configurations in place.

Configuration

Create a configuration file called coturn.conf containing:

use-auth-secret
static-auth-secret=<a secret key>
realm=<your server domain>

A common way to generate a suitable alphanumeric secret key is by using pwgen -s 64 1.

These same values need to be set in conduit. You can either modify conduit.toml to include these lines:

turn_uris = ["turn:<your server domain>?transport=udp", "turn:<your server domain>?transport=tcp"]
turn_secret = "<secret key from coturn configuration>"

or append the following to the docker environment variables dependig on which configuration method you used earlier:

CONDUIT_TURN_URIS: '["turn:<your server domain>?transport=udp", "turn:<your server domain>?transport=tcp"]'
CONDUIT_TURN_SECRET: "<secret key from coturn configuration>"

Restart Conduit to apply these changes.

Run

Run the Coturn image using

docker run -d --network=host -v $(pwd)/coturn.conf:/etc/coturn/turnserver.conf coturn/coturn

or docker compose. For the latter, paste the following section into a file called docker-compose.yml and run docker compose up -d in the same directory.

version: 3
services:
    turn:
      container_name: coturn-server
      image: docker.io/coturn/coturn
      restart: unless-stopped
      network_mode: "host"
      volumes:
        - ./coturn.conf:/etc/coturn/turnserver.conf

To understand why the host networking mode is used and explore alternative configuration options, please visit the following link: https://github.com/coturn/coturn/blob/master/docker/coturn/README.md. For security recommendations see Synapse's Coturn documentation.