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Install Riot on Debian 10

Updated , by Dan Nielsen
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Riot is an open source complete communication service. You can use Riot to chat, exchange files, make voice or video calls, and add bots; all while keeping control of your data. Riot is a Matrix web client.

Note
Riot has been renamed to Element. You can read more about this name change on the Element blog. This guide uses the Riot naming to refer to this Matrix web client.

Before You Begin

  1. If you have not already done so, create a Linode account and Compute Instance. See our Getting Started with Linode and Creating a Compute Instance guides.

  2. Follow our Setting Up and Securing a Compute Instance guide to update your system. You may also wish to set the timezone, configure your hostname, create a limited user account, and harden SSH access.

    Note
    If you choose to configure a firewall, remember to open ports 80 and 443 for the server when you reach the configure a firewall section of the guide.

  3. To connect to the Synapse / Matrix services with a client other than Riot, you need a Matrix client.

Note
This guide is written for a non-root user. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with sudo. If you’re not familiar with the sudo command, see the Users and Groups guide.

Setup DNS

In this guide the base domain is demochat.com. Ensure that you replace demochat.com with a registered domain name in the following steps. Each service gets a separate subdomain as a general hygiene measure. So in this example, create DNS records for:

  • demochat.com (General website and hosting for .well-known path to advertise Matrix services.)
  • matrix.demochat.com (Synapse)
  • riot.demochat.com (Riot)

Set each of the above DNS records to the public IP address of the Linode instance.

Refer to Add DNS Records for more information on configuring DNS entries or consult your DNS provider’s documentation if using an external DNS provider.

Install Riot

Install Synapse

  1. Install Synapse using its Debian packages:

     sudo apt install -y lsb-release wget apt-transport-https
 sudo wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.matrix.org/debian/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg
 echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/matrix-org-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.matrix.org/debian/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/matrix-org.list
 sudo apt update
 sudo apt install matrix-synapse-py3

  2. Enable registration on the Synapse instance by setting enable_registration: true in your /etc/matrix-sysnapse/homeserver.yaml file:

    File: /etc/matrix-sysnapse/homeserver.yaml
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    ...
enable_registration: true
...

  3. Restart Synapse to enable your configuration:

     sudo systemctl restart matrix-synapse

  4. Configure the rest of Matrix to find the server. The easiest way is to publish a .well-known file that indicates the hostname and port where the Synapse for demochat.com is available.

     sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/demochat.com/.well-known/matrix
 echo '{ "m.server": "demochat.com:443" }' | sudo tee /var/www/html/demochat.com/.well-known/matrix/server

Install the Latest Riot/Web Release

In this section, you use the latest .tgz release from the Element repository (formerly know as Vector and Riot) to install the Matrix web client. Grab the latest .tgz release from (https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/releases) and check the GPG signature.

  1. Create a new directory to store Riot, move into the directory, and install Riot from the latest release. As of writing this guide the latest version is v1.5.15. Ensure you replace any instance of 1.5.15 with your own desired version.

     sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/riot.demochat.com
 cd /var/www/html/riot.demochat.com
 sudo wget https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/releases/download/v1.5.15/riot-v1.5.15.tar.gz

  2. Verify your installation’s GnuPG signature:

     sudo apt install -y gnupg
 sudo wget https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/releases/download/v1.5.15/riot-v1.5.15.tar.gz.asc

  3. Grab the signing key for the riot releases repository. Ideally this is done from a key server:

     sudo gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --search-keys releases@riot.im

  4. Verify that you receive a Good signature response when you validate the signature:

     sudo gpg --verify riot-v1.5.15.tar.gz.asc

  5. Extract the Riot .tar.gz file you installed. Ensure you replace v1.5.15 with your own installation’s version number.

     sudo tar -xzvf riot-v1.5.15.tar.gz
 sudo ln -s riot-v1.5.15 riot

  6. Move into the riot directory and create a copy of the config.sample.json and name it config.json.

     cd riot
 sudo cp config.sample.json config.json

  7. Open the config.json file you created and update base_url and server_name with the values in the example file.

    File: /var/www/html/riot.demochat.com/riot/config.json
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    {
    "default_server_config": {
        "m.homeserver": {
            "base_url": "https://matrix.demochat.com"
            "server_name": "demochat.com"
        },
        "m.identity_server": {
            "base_url": "https://matrix.demochat.com"
        }
    }
...
}
...

Install and Configure NGINX and Let’s Encrypt

In this section, you use NGINX as your web server and Let’s Encrypt to secure your services.

  1. Install NGINX:

    sudo apt -y install nginx

  2. Create the vhost files for each subdomain:

    sudo touch /etc/nginx/sites-available/{demochat.com,matrix.demochat.com,riot.demochat.com}
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/demochat.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/demochat.com
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/matrix.demochat.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/matrix.demochat.com
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/riot.demochat.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/riot.demochat.com

  3. Add your site configuration to each of the configuration files you created in the previous step.

    File: /etc/nginx/sites-available/demochat.com
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        server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        server_name demochat.com;
        root /var/www/html/demochat.com;
        index index.html;

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
    }
    File: /etc/nginx/sites-available/riot.demochat.com
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        server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        server_name riot.demochat.com;
        root /var/www/html/riot.demochat.com/riot;
        index index.html;

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
    }
    File: /etc/nginx/sites-available/matrix.demochat.com
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        server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        server_name matrix.demochat.com;
        root /var/www/html/matrix.demochat.com;
        index index.html;

        location / {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:8008;
        }
    }

  4. Install certbot and configure your Let’s Encrypt certificates:

    sudo apt install -y python3-certbot-nginx && certbot --nginx -d demochat.com -d riot.demochat.com -d matrix.demochat.com

Enable Your Installation’s Services

  1. Add services to the default run level and restart your services:

    sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl enable matrix-synapse
sudo systemctl restart nginx

You should now be able to visit https://riot.demochat.com register an account, sign in, and start chatting.

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