4.1 KiB
Using a reverse proxy with Synapse
It is recommended to put a reverse proxy such as nginx, Apache, Caddy or HAProxy in front of Synapse. One advantage of doing so is that it means that you can expose the default https port (443) to Matrix clients without needing to run Synapse with root privileges.
NOTE: Your reverse proxy must not canonicalise
or normalise
the requested URI in any way (for example, by decoding %xx
escapes).
Beware that Apache will canonicalise URIs unless you specifify
nocanon
.
When setting up a reverse proxy, remember that Matrix clients and other Matrix servers do not necessarily need to connect to your server via the same server name or port. Indeed, clients will use port 443 by default, whereas servers default to port 8448. Where these are different, we refer to the 'client port' and the 'federation port'. See the Matrix specification for more details of the algorithm used for federation connections, and delegate.md for instructions on setting up delegation.
Let's assume that we expect clients to connect to our server at
https://matrix.example.com
, and other servers to connect at
https://example.com:8448
. The following sections detail the configuration of
the reverse proxy and the homeserver.
Reverse-proxy configuration examples
NOTE: You only need one of these.
nginx
server {
listen 443 ssl;
listen [::]:443 ssl;
server_name matrix.example.com;
location /_matrix {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8008;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
}
}
server {
listen 8448 ssl default_server;
listen [::]:8448 ssl default_server;
server_name example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8008;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
}
}
Note
: Do not add a
/
after the port inproxy_pass
, otherwise nginx will canonicalise/normalise the URI.
Caddy
matrix.example.com {
proxy /_matrix http://localhost:8008 {
transparent
}
}
example.com:8448 {
proxy / http://localhost:8008 {
transparent
}
}
Apache
<VirtualHost *:443>
SSLEngine on
ServerName matrix.example.com;
AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode
ProxyPass /_matrix http://127.0.0.1:8008/_matrix nocanon
ProxyPassReverse /_matrix http://127.0.0.1:8008/_matrix
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:8448>
SSLEngine on
ServerName example.com;
AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode
ProxyPass /_matrix http://127.0.0.1:8008/_matrix nocanon
ProxyPassReverse /_matrix http://127.0.0.1:8008/_matrix
</VirtualHost>
Note
: ensure the
nocanon
options are included.
HAProxy
frontend https
bind :::443 v4v6 ssl crt /etc/ssl/haproxy/ strict-sni alpn h2,http/1.1
# Matrix client traffic
acl matrix-host hdr(host) -i matrix.example.com
acl matrix-path path_beg /_matrix
use_backend matrix if matrix-host matrix-path
frontend matrix-federation
bind :::8448 v4v6 ssl crt /etc/ssl/haproxy/synapse.pem alpn h2,http/1.1
default_backend matrix
backend matrix
server matrix 127.0.0.1:8008
Homeserver Configuration
You will also want to set bind_addresses: ['127.0.0.1']
and
x_forwarded: true
for port 8008 in homeserver.yaml
to ensure that
client IP addresses are recorded correctly.
Having done so, you can then use https://matrix.example.com
(instead
of https://matrix.example.com:8448
) as the "Custom server" when
connecting to Synapse from a client.