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> Synapse works but feels extremely clunky to set up and maintain, and that's not even counting the resource usage (which is admittedly getting better, but stil

> Synapse works but feels extremely clunky to set up and maintain, and that's not even counting the resource usage (which is admittedly getting better, but still harsh). What's clunky about Synapse setup? I can perhaps see setting up a worker (sharded) setup is a bit complicated, but a basic monolithic instance is pretty straightforward. Also, how much resource usage are you seeing? My monolithic Synapse instance uses about 300-500M of memory usage and 5-15% CPU isn't at all bad and it's in a lot of rooms.

jimmygrapes 5y ago
It's hard to put into words, which is why I said "feels" rather than "is" ;) It might just be my own lack of skill, but I found myself initially getting overwhelmed at trying to hunt down which settings to change to ensure no federation or third party calls were made, since that was my usage scenario. Even then, a rogue "allow vector.im" snuck in here and there at first. My second go around a year or two later was much easier since I already knew what to look for, and had a better grasp of how to handle the ACME/DNS aspect of it all (which isn't the fault of the Matrix team at all, but was still a pain point). Some other pain points for me were grasping identity servers and trusted certificate providers and STUN/TURN and integrations, since there was a whole lot of learning necessary for me before I was comfortable just following the installation steps as-written. I did try the Ansible playbook during another attempt, and while it worked pretty well there was still the same sense of "wow that's a lot of configuration". I also foolishly tried to apply it to a pre-existing server running nginx, which, while possible, adds some extra complexity to avoid breaking existing configs. YMMV, I am just not the brightest of fellas. As far as resources go, a $5 VPS covered more than enough to handle even the older versions of Synapse for my use case, since I wasn't federating and have a fairly small number of users (under 100). I couldn't tell you whether federation or more usage would change that, but community reports (at the time) were that Synapse struggled. Much of that seems to have been addressed since then. Overall I think if I were to start over, I'd stick to the Ansible playbook on a fresh server.
stevenicr 5y ago
no op, but just went through my 6th synapse / element install.. A lot of the clunky is stuff like postgres settings - is the hbaconfig thing right? why is my default install of postgres oin deb 11 listening to public ips - why does it take 36 hours of chat replies to figure out that broken part.. why does certbot muck up my nginx - it's not matrix fault, or certbot's fault or nginx's fault - I just followed different parts of different tutorials for different pieces of the needed things and things broke. I wish support / QnA was moved out of the chat rooms and into a QnA wordpress theme so people didn't get ignored at whatever hour and issues missed. I tried ansible a bunch of times over times - some support happened, but I had to abandon it, even though it seemed to do 99% of the things.. I still can't get my element to allow 'explore rooms' guest joins - even though I had it working on my second install - and I double checked the settings - and I've asked for help 3 times in the room - and then there's the maintenance things in need - I'm shredding my first successful one since I can't get postgres to vacuum a 350GB DB on the droplet I'm paying too much for, and to find that out was a joyous long process of lots to learn. Anyway, I love it. It's the best. It's just clunky because there are so many other things that aren't easy, that aren't matrix. and the maintenance and other addin things are not easy - like I wish adding sticker picker was like adding a wordpress plugin - I could never get that working with ,y 1.2.6 install - but that's not matrix fault - it's just a thing that was tried and not easy for me, and the support help was a little - so cool - but not enough - so never worked. things like that. I really need to get ahead of the maintenance thing to remove old stuff and stuff - hope that works okay. fingers crossed - or I'll just be shredding a chat server every 6 months and starting a fresh one - haha.
- jeltz 5y ago
  > why is my default install of postgres oin deb 11 listening to public ips Because it isn't. I cannot comment on the other stuff but this simply isn't true. PostgreSQL on Debian (and upstream) only listens to 127.0.0.1 by default. If it listens to more it is likely something the you or the Matrix devs have done.
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    yeah - I am sure you are right - this one thing was a reason matrix was not working for me - and someone in the chat did help me figure that out by running netstat I think. This was part of the clunky / multiple tutorial thing - I think to get it up and running I had 150 tabs open - 30 tabs for different "how to's" for nginx and certbot, 50 tabs open for postgres, 50 tabs open for ufw and iptables - 20 tabs with stack overflows and such on minor things. (This may be a slight exageration but not far off I'm thinking) I think I was using 4 different matrix tutorials from different places to do the different things. So having non-default things happening and conflicts and all that - no surprise. Some were tutorials for ubuntu or other OS's, many were made for Deb 9 or 10 - but that's just what I needed to get through all the hoops. I'm considering exporting a list of the history / bookmarks I've gone through this last couple of installs to show the madness. I've also (pretty sure) saved all the command line stuff from putty - obviously there are many mistakes, and not every command will be exported - but it's a rough guide to get started )and easier to search for commands in there like how to stop / restart synapse - which varies depending on OS and such I think - and this is without the maintain things, the mojinor thing, the sticker picker and other addins (yet) that should be a thing. not doing the ngninx and certbot stuff in the right order led me to days of troubleshooting only to finally give up and use a completely different domain name in order to get it working for the element part - haha - good times. I've learned a lot about little things, but still feel all the moving parts are clunky - and it's not matrix per se - but dang it's not a one-click install and config everything like a softalicious doing wordpress either.. of course it's better (postgres va mysql) - and nginx vs apache and all that.

jimmygrapes 5y ago

It's hard to put into words, which is why I said "feels" rather than "is" ;) It might just be my own lack of skill, but I found myself initially getting overwhelmed at trying to hunt down which settings to change to ensure no federation or third party calls were made, since that was my usage scenario. Even then, a rogue "allow vector.im" snuck in here and there at first. My second go around a year or two later was much easier since I already knew what to look for, and had a better grasp of how to handle the ACME/DNS aspect of it all (which isn't the fault of the Matrix team at all, but was still a pain point). Some other pain points for me were grasping identity servers and trusted certificate providers and STUN/TURN and integrations, since there was a whole lot of learning necessary for me before I was comfortable just following the installation steps as-written. I did try the Ansible playbook during another attempt, and while it worked pretty well there was still the same sense of "wow that's a lot of configuration". I also foolishly tried to apply it to a pre-existing server running nginx, which, while possible, adds some extra complexity to avoid breaking existing configs. YMMV, I am just not the brightest of fellas. As far as resources go, a $5 VPS covered more than enough to handle even the older versions of Synapse for my use case, since I wasn't federating and have a fairly small number of users (under 100). I couldn't tell you whether federation or more usage would change that, but community reports (at the time) were that Synapse struggled. Much of that seems to have been addressed since then. Overall I think if I were to start over, I'd stick to the Ansible playbook on a fresh server.

stevenicr 5y ago

no op, but just went through my 6th synapse / element install.. A lot of the clunky is stuff like postgres settings - is the hbaconfig thing right? why is my default install of postgres oin deb 11 listening to public ips - why does it take 36 hours of chat replies to figure out that broken part.. why does certbot muck up my nginx - it's not matrix fault, or certbot's fault or nginx's fault - I just followed different parts of different tutorials for different pieces of the needed things and things broke. I wish support / QnA was moved out of the chat rooms and into a QnA wordpress theme so people didn't get ignored at whatever hour and issues missed. I tried ansible a bunch of times over times - some support happened, but I had to abandon it, even though it seemed to do 99% of the things.. I still can't get my element to allow 'explore rooms' guest joins - even though I had it working on my second install - and I double checked the settings - and I've asked for help 3 times in the room - and then there's the maintenance things in need - I'm shredding my first successful one since I can't get postgres to vacuum a 350GB DB on the droplet I'm paying too much for, and to find that out was a joyous long process of lots to learn. Anyway, I love it. It's the best. It's just clunky because there are so many other things that aren't easy, that aren't matrix. and the maintenance and other addin things are not easy - like I wish adding sticker picker was like adding a wordpress plugin - I could never get that working with ,y 1.2.6 install - but that's not matrix fault - it's just a thing that was tried and not easy for me, and the support help was a little - so cool - but not enough - so never worked. things like that. I really need to get ahead of the maintenance thing to remove old stuff and stuff - hope that works okay. fingers crossed - or I'll just be shredding a chat server every 6 months and starting a fresh one - haha.

jeltz 5y ago
> why is my default install of postgres oin deb 11 listening to public ips Because it isn't. I cannot comment on the other stuff but this simply isn't true. PostgreSQL on Debian (and upstream) only listens to 127.0.0.1 by default. If it listens to more it is likely something the you or the Matrix devs have done.
- stevenicr 5y ago
  yeah - I am sure you are right - this one thing was a reason matrix was not working for me - and someone in the chat did help me figure that out by running netstat I think. This was part of the clunky / multiple tutorial thing - I think to get it up and running I had 150 tabs open - 30 tabs for different "how to's" for nginx and certbot, 50 tabs open for postgres, 50 tabs open for ufw and iptables - 20 tabs with stack overflows and such on minor things. (This may be a slight exageration but not far off I'm thinking) I think I was using 4 different matrix tutorials from different places to do the different things. So having non-default things happening and conflicts and all that - no surprise. Some were tutorials for ubuntu or other OS's, many were made for Deb 9 or 10 - but that's just what I needed to get through all the hoops. I'm considering exporting a list of the history / bookmarks I've gone through this last couple of installs to show the madness. I've also (pretty sure) saved all the command line stuff from putty - obviously there are many mistakes, and not every command will be exported - but it's a rough guide to get started )and easier to search for commands in there like how to stop / restart synapse - which varies depending on OS and such I think - and this is without the maintain things, the mojinor thing, the sticker picker and other addins (yet) that should be a thing. not doing the ngninx and certbot stuff in the right order led me to days of troubleshooting only to finally give up and use a completely different domain name in order to get it working for the element part - haha - good times. I've learned a lot about little things, but still feel all the moving parts are clunky - and it's not matrix per se - but dang it's not a one-click install and config everything like a softalicious doing wordpress either.. of course it's better (postgres va mysql) - and nginx vs apache and all that.