Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

by nateb2022 • 3 years ago

413 188 3 years ago

robobro• 3 years ago

One thing I didn't like about Matrix: I had a single server with 3 or 4 other users. In a few months, the database ballooned to, like, 80GB. User-uploaded content, including text, was in the ballpark of 2 or 3GB. Is there any way to clear out the cache of data received from old servers, say, anything more than 2 weeks old, and re-retrieve it if needed?

wjbolles• 3 years ago

Yeah, there are admin APIs that can clear old images, local and remote ones. For your specific scenario you probably want this one:

https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/v1.85/admin_api/media_a...

My server is not federated but fairly active, and we treat it as ephemeral. We've configured it so anything older than a week or two gets reclaimed automatically, text and media.

CameronNemo10• 3 years ago

Are you using synapse?

COGlory4• 3 years ago

Yes, it's room/concersation states taking up all the space, and you can compress them.

https://levans.fr/shrink-synapse-database.html

https://github.com/matrix-org/rust-synapse-compress-state

lightedman• 3 years ago

That it generates that much cruft for something so simple is disappointing. How long does the compression bandaid work for?

toastal2• 3 years ago

This is one of those things that make me appreciate XMPP. There’s no expectation to duplicate the entire history of chatrooms. Many MUCs default to the last 20 messages, which is usually enough to let you catch & jump in on the conversation. Costs of running my server have been quite cheap.

rjvs2• 3 years ago

How does this relate to Synapse? Dendrite tests against https://github.com/matrix-org/sytest and has issues for “are we synapse yet” — I can’t see any discussion of this for Conduit (not even a discussion on why they don’t want to be like Synapse).

CameronNemo10• 3 years ago

Looks like SyTest is primarily oriented towards use with Synapse, and the dendrite folks are wrapping it up for their own CI integration. Perhaps Conduit could reuse some of their work, although IIRC Conduit is using GitLab and Dendrite is using GitHub Actions.

Separately, it seems that Conduit is not orienting itself as a drop in replacement for Synapse. At least at the current moment. There are a number of notable feature gaps that I recall being mentioned last time I was in the Matrix room.

Arathorn5• 3 years ago

Sytest is designed to test any Matrix server. The only reason it’s called Sytest is because that Matrix was briefly originally called Synapse (before we came up with the much better name Matrix, and chose to keep Synapse around for the first implementation).

TheCycoONE• 3 years ago

Conduit is a 3rd party implementation of the matrix server spec in Rust. Synapse and Dendrite are both first party where Dendrite was originally intended to replace Synapse.

The selling features are lightweight and simple to setup, implying that Synapse is not. It is more importantly a validation of the matrix server specs and over the years they have done quite a bit to get ambiguities clarified.

wkat4242• 3 years ago

Originally intended? So dendrite is not slated to replace synapse anymore? I know the 'eventually' has become a bit of a running joke but I thought this was still the plan.

It's a shame there's no upgrade path though. With retention of history.

est• 3 years ago

how does it compare to Zulip?

dsr_• 3 years ago

Zulip isn't a Matrix server. Zulip doesn't federate.

If you want a private, non-federated chat server -- for your organization, basically -- Zulip is awesome.

If you want federated chat, Zulip doesn't do that.

somenewaccount1• 3 years ago

Since every matrix server requires you create its own user id, I never understood the benefit of being federated.

gorgoiler• 3 years ago

Does Zulip have video calls and screen sharing? I took their “feature tour” just now and it seems 100% chat focused.

https://zulip.com/

Matrix (Synapse / Dendrite / Conduit / Element) all support audio and video as well as text.

bhanu423• 3 years ago

It has Zoom and Jitsi integration, which lets you create instant meeting on these platform. Anyways the killer feature of zulip that I find is its usage of threads, much more usable than slack threads which gets super overwhelming for me.

ryanolsonx• 3 years ago

How does this compare with Conduit? [1]

[1] https://demo.realworld.io

lenova4• 3 years ago

They don't appear to be related technologies at all, apart from the similar names?

NewJazz2• 3 years ago

I can only assume the commenter was attempting to poke fun at the number of comments asking "How does this compare to X?".

gbraad3• 3 years ago

I might have missed something, but the page is very simplistic and assumes you know what Matrix is and how to use this; a lot of time is spent on the installation through different means, but none how to use the server itself, either by use of a client?

CameronNemo10• 3 years ago

Was the link changed?

What is Matrix?

Matrix is an open network for secure and decentralized communication. Users from every Matrix homeserver can chat with users from all other Matrix servers. You can even use bridges to communicate with users outside of Matrix, like a community on Discord.

And I see no installation information.

nani8ot8• 3 years ago

I don't know about the previous link, but conduit.rs has a Link called "Documentation" at the top of the page.

Installation is downloading a binary, setting up autostart and writing/copying a 10 line configuration.toml.

TheDong• 3 years ago

The first link on the page is to matrix.org. matrix.org links to clients: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

You probably would want element.

I think conduit's page is doing the right thing. It doesn't really assume you know what matrix is, but rather assumes you're smart enough to click on a link if you don't know.

ldoughty• 3 years ago

I agree with the grandparent -- while trying to determine what this was, I looked at other links to try and find the answer and went down the wrong path.

Users from every Matrix homeserver can chat with users from all other Matrix servers.

This statement lead me to assumed the "matrix specification" discussed was about server-to-server communication... I'm not interested in digging into the underpinnings of this server-to-server communication (right now) just like I'm not terribly interested in how blockchains keep in sync across nodes... But I am interested in how this whole stack works, and I was lost with this page as the starting point.

So I think it's safe to add an extra sentence to explain the relationship while still keeping the page simplistic and focused.

RamblingCTO• 3 years ago

Hard disagree. One of the worst landing pages I've ever seen. What exactly is it? Just a backend? Client? Don't waste my whole screen with the logo and a wannabe catchy phrase. Just tell me the gist

lenova4• 3 years ago

The landing page is pretty good if you are familiar with Matrix.org, and I'm assuming that it's aimed at Matrix developers. Personally I appreciated the brevity, simple declaration of the problem it's trying to solve, and a quick link to the real call to action (the Git repo).

EDIT: realizing that the landing page may have been updated with new content itself since your original post.

gbraad3• 3 years ago

I would hope the audience targeted is admins/deployers instead of developers, as you would like to drive adoption.

Freie_Messenger6• 3 years ago

...assumes you know what Matrix is ...

Matrix is a chat protocol. It works like chatting over GIT (distributed databases) and is more like a team messenger like Mattermost or Zulip. Conduit is a server software and not for end users.

More information about Matrix: https://www.freie-messenger.de/en/matrix

kitkat_new5• 3 years ago

and is more like a team messenger like Mattermost or Zulip.

if at all, Element is this.

Matrix doesn't really care about what type of users the clients target

shortrounddev2• 3 years ago

When I tried Matrix I found a lot of super right wing tech people using it. The main reason I could ascertain most of them were using Matrix was because they had been banned by other chat platforms for their opinions

camdenlock• 3 years ago

That says more about those “other chat platforms” than anything else.

CameronNemo10• 3 years ago

Yeah you can find some ... Strange characters... off in the fediverse.

dugite-code• 3 years ago

Matrix is a protocol not a service.

This will always be an "issue" of decentralized services, just look at the Lemmy devs over on Lemmygrad, super far left. Anyone can host a server running a protocol, lets not throw the baby out with the bath water just because people are saying something objectionable in one server. If you don't like these people join/make an instance that doesn't interact with them.

erinnh2• 3 years ago

I use it regularly. There probably are those communities you are talking about, but I haven’t personally seen them, so my advice would be to ignore them and join those that more align with what you’d like to see.

I’ve found many nice and welcoming communities on matrix.

freeopinion3• 3 years ago

I've heard a lot of super right wing tech people also use email, cell phones, Twitter, and TikTok. I heard some of them drive Fords, too.

panick21_• 3 years ago

Like Mozilla and GNOME. And the left wing CCC. They were all banned everywhere.

DoItToMe812• 3 years ago

I have never at any point encountered "super right wing" people on any main Matrix server. I've seen a lot of the opposite, to the point where it seemed administration was unfairly strict on people they considered part of them, while letting the other side run rampant. I somehow doubt this.

The only time I've encountered anything of this description is when I was looking into why a server had been defederated, and then found out it was mostly neo nazis and weirdos obsessed with anime children. I had to actively seek them out to discover this.

ruslan3• 3 years ago

Can someone please explain, why use Matrix while there's XMPP ?

maccam912• 3 years ago

Network effect? I use matrix today. What does xmpp have that I should switch for?

CameronNemo10• 3 years ago

JMP.chat

Speaking as a user of both element generally and Cheogram/JMP.chat.

I still use both.

toastal2• 3 years ago

XMPP by its extensible nature can be a social network (Movim), a community organizer (Libervia), or can be used for basic presence, etc. & these can sit atop your XMPP server (Prosody, ejabberd, etc.). Matrix, without extensibility, is kinda relegated to chat (text, voice, video) only. The push-based servers make clients efficient, and both Prosody & ejabberd can be UnifiedPush server with a basically a boolean flip in the config—interestingly can be a push server for Element & other Matrix clients instead of relying on Google.

rakoo2• 3 years ago

You can run a functional server for multiple people on a very low-power device.

erinnh2• 3 years ago

My first thought was: „my question would be the reverse“. I have no idea why I’d use XMPP, so I will tell you what I like about Matrix.

- modern chat solution with features people have come to expect from Slack and Discord

- many bridges that have kept me from having to use more than one chat client for multiple protocols (think pidgin)

- lots of great communities are on matrix

- pretty good voice chat

- open source

- selfhosted

Those are my main reasons why I like Matrix. My question to you would be: what do you like about XMPP?

johnny22• 3 years ago

xmpp did most of that first before it fell off :(

rhn_mk13• 3 years ago

what do you like about XMPP?

- plenty of fast native clients

- server resource usage

- simplicity of the protocol, especially the encryption

EgregiousCube• 3 years ago

What is a good way to discover great communities on Matrix?

ruslan3• 3 years ago

XMPP is well-defined open source selfhosted easily extendable federated standard for exchanging data containers (messages) in a sequential manner. I have zero experience with Matrix, but have experience developing Jabber clients (both mobile and desktop), developing XMPP server, services and VoIP gateways back in mid 2000th. I can say that XMPP with it's all-covering XEPs can satisfy needs of anyone today. Why would people need something else like Matrix ? I'm trying to understand what motivated Matrix development. Can Matrix provide anything that is completely missing in XMPP beside bad PR ?

XMPP gained bad publicity as overcomplicated XML based protocol which was abandoned by Google in favour of their proprietary solution somethere in 2011. Till then it had been worshipped as one of the best open standard ever developed.

Freie_Messenger6• 3 years ago

„my question would be the reverse“. I have no idea why I’d use XMPP
My question to you would be: what do you like about XMPP?

Same things & more:

- modern chat solution with features people have com to expect from WhatsApp

- many bridges that have kept me from having to use more than one chat client for multiple protocols (think pidgin)

- many great messengers have discovered XMPP as a great base for their system

- lots of great communities are on XMPP

- realistic participant counts in public chat rooms - no counting dead (former) members

- pretty good video & voice chat

- open source

- selfhosting possible

- fewer concerns about data protection and privacy

- more resource efficient (less memory required, lower CPU utilization)

And:

- The use is possible and allowed everywhere where e-mail is in use.

LanternLight83• 3 years ago

My 2c might not crush the scale, but FWIW I'd expect XMPP clients to be easier to work with if I had existing PGP keyrings that I wanted to re-use, favoring consistant identities and protocols over more stringent avoidance of key re-use. Could be a key on a smartcard, or the key your employer kept a revocation certificate for.

Conversations has great support for OpenKeychain on Android, and I'd love to see that come to competing protocol Deltachat but the devs are focusing on cross-platform behaviors atm. Android-specific fork Deltalabs might be willing to be upstream for it if anyone knows where to start with that.

nine_k• 3 years ago

There's the least common denominator XMPP, with a lot of key functions under optional XEPs. Thus the user experience is very uneven across clients and servers.

Matrix has a more defined set of important features, so you could expect that conforming clients all implement them uniformly, without surprises.

NewJazz2• 3 years ago

This argument seems so weird to me because the matrix ecosystem definitely does have complete and non-complete clients. Just like the XMPP ecosystem. And as for servers... Dendrite and Conduit are not 100% compatible with Synapse.

I imagine there must be some good clients for XMPP. Hell, I use one good client (Conversations on Android) on a daily basis. Also have used Gajim quite a bit. It is alright afaict.

freeopinion3• 3 years ago

Funny, I recently got pretty frustrated looking for a decent Matrix client. Not even Element claimed to support the full list of features on the Matrix website. And Element has super bizarre behavior like not allowing to paste into the message composer. And good luck getting help when a client doesn't work.

That said, I can't claim XMPP clients are any better.

prmoustache• 3 years ago

In practice, it only works better if you stick to element so it is pretty much the same. The difference being that they ship a full featured web version so anyone with an OS that support modern web should be able to support it.

ziftface• 3 years ago

Isn't xmpp old style instant messaging? As in, if you miss a message because you had poor connection or the application wasn't running then it's gone?

Matrix does not work this way.

therein• 3 years ago

XMPP supports delayed delivery. It works although I have had minor issues with it, especially if OMEMO is enabled.

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0203.html

Freie_Messenger6• 3 years ago

Isn't xmpp old style instant messaging?

No.

XMPP is just as "modern" as Matrix, but has a _different _ data storage/distribution idea.

see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36939676

rakoo2• 3 years ago

That was true 20 years ago. For the past 10+ years XMPP has had Stream Resumption that allows you to resume a few stanzas you missed recently (typically with a poor connection), and Message Archive Management that stores everything on the server that you can then retrieve on the client.

XMPP has had little place on the public stage, but that doesn't mean it stopped evolving.

pmlnr• 3 years ago

Preference, I guess. It appeals to the masses who are growing up on discord and slack.

I also prefer XMPP.

soulmerge• 3 years ago

For me it's about federation. I have my own server and chat with my family there. And I also have friends with accounts elsewhere and I can message them as well.

And I'm looking forward to integrations (Slack, Signal, ...) being more user-friendly, and easier to install, configure and maintain, so I can message others, too.

CameronNemo10• 3 years ago

XMPP is federated and has some integrations (among them, SMS/MMS and phone call support).

pkulak2• 3 years ago

Matrix is more like a state synchronization service than a way to send messages. If I join a room on another Matrix server, my server will begin maintaining a copy of that other sever for me to use how I like. If I shut my server down for a day, it will sync back up when it comes back.

I’m not sure if XMPP works like that, but I always thought it was more like email: send a message, maybe retry a bit, but that’s about it. Not sure how transient things like presence, read receipts, and typing notifications work either, across servers.

Freie_Messenger6• 3 years ago

Matrix is like chatting via GIT (distributed databases) and tends to be a team messenger like Mattermost or Zulip - XMPP is structurally like email (but with options like online status, currently typing, last online, ...) and is often used by large messenger services (e.g. WhatsApp uses its own variant of XMPP).

XMPP is the only system that can and may(!) be used wherever email is in use.

XMPP is just as "modern" as Matrix, but has a _different _ data storage/distribution idea.

Comparison: https://www.freie-messenger.de/en/systemvergleich/xmpp-matri...

ruslan3• 3 years ago

Thanks!

j1elo• 3 years ago

Because summaries like this still stand up as of today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998290

XMPP is great for what it was designed for. It doesn't work well with mobile, high packet loss & high latency connections. XMPP is talkative and bandwidth intensive - bad for limited data/battery applications. It also wasn't designed for today's 1 person multiple devices reality. Most XMPP servers let you log in multiple times but messages don't sync between clients and sometimes get delivered to the client the user isnt currently in front of.
Also, sending files over XMPP has pretty much always sucked - there are a bunch of incompatible ways to do it and it's always been hit and miss depending on which client your chat partner was using, network topography, etc.

Also, overload of XEPs doesn't help the ecosystem. Too many optional extensions hinders interop. People expect more features in modern chat experiences than what XMPP was designed for, and that's what XEPs have tried to fix as a bandaid, with mixed results.

On top of that, the technology choices are par of the course for the time it was designed, and nowadays there are arguably better things. Devs are naturally driven to choose tech that makes their work nicer, if they enjoy it, so that means more stuff gets done for the newer platform, in this case. As an example, coincidentally, another HN post today was touching on one of those points - the need for a very advanced XML parser, as a typical one apparently wouldn't be enough:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36930196

Andrew_nenakhov• 3 years ago

It doesn't work well with mobile, high packet loss & high latency connections.

This is an absolutely false, baseless statement, mostly amounting to FUD. Messages work well on mobile, and they sync between devices just fine.

Also, overload of XEPs doesn't help the ecosystem.

On the contrary, XEPs create the ecosystem. As I often say, Matrix is not a protocol, it's a product with an API created by a single organization.

ashton3142• 3 years ago

I’ve run a self-hosted Conduit instance for some years now. Pros: easy to install and use. Cons: it’s beta software!

That said, it’s been really good for me. Reliable chat between my and a few friends, plus some big-ish rooms that I participate in.

The author also works on Veloren[1]—another fun Rust project!

[1] https://veloren.net

socceroos• 3 years ago

I've been using Conduit for quite a while now and have found it to be very good. For ages though it has been missing support for spaces, but support has just landed in the development builds and it is great. I've already updated my service and it has worked as expected.

badrabbit• 3 years ago

I wish there was a similar client that has full feature support but that's the problem with matrix, too many features, signal, discord, slack, zoom and teams all meshed into one thing. Would be nice if they had a secure chat only sub-protocol.

smoldesu2• 3 years ago

The author also works on Veloren

That game is fucking cool. A couple years ago me and some friends compiled it for kicks and giggles to see what it was all about. To our surprise, the game ran silky smooth on my GTX 1050 Ti. We get into a lobby. We play for a half hour.

We're just exploring (the map is barebones but has cool landmarks) when I realize that you can scroll to zoom out from your character. In a psychadelic twist, you can just keep zooming out past normal ARPG levels and into a minimap-scale world, then above the clouds, all without dropping a frame.

I don't know how well-maintained the project is today, but it's got the bones for a badass RPG. One of these days I'll hop back on...

freeCandy• 3 years ago

The game is very actively developed and there are lots of devlogs

https://veloren.net/devblogs

If the last time you played was a few years ago, they've pushed out a huge amount of features since then. Very impressive for a fully open source game.

sph• 3 years ago

From Veloren's home page:

"Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust. It is inspired by games such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft."

I love how pointing out that it's written in Rust is more important that describing what the game is about or inspired by. Classic open source project unsure of who's the intended audience.

ashton3142• 3 years ago

I don't know how well-maintained the project is today

Updates every Thursday! If you ever get on the main server, look for "varsderk" and I'll help you bootstrap fast. :)

zesterer2• 3 years ago

It's still going strong! We just released 0.15. It's still in pre-alpha, but the map is much less sparse nowadays and there's a lot more to do!

vmfunction• 3 years ago

Yeah seems like a good alternative to run the dentrite (go) server. That seems to be in development forever. At this point, the python server is taking too much resources, nice to see an alternative to go the server.

Arkanosis5• 3 years ago

I've been running it for 10 months now. Very smooth experience (both installation and usage).

I'm the only user on my server and I've not joined any very active room, but so far its impact on my small VPS performance has been negligible.

dang• 3 years ago

Conduit Beta – Matrix chat server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28385840 - Sept 2021 (69 comments)

infogulch2• 3 years ago

Conduit is a very cool project, but unfortunately it seems difficult to follow the status and progress short of reading all commits and issues.

I'm excited for the recent progress on the built-in Sliding Sync feature because it's much easier to deploy.

hparadiz• 3 years ago

Is there a way to migrate from Synapse to this? I don't know if I can justify destroying 6 years of conversation history.

nani8ot8• 3 years ago

Not yet. There're plans to build migration tool for Synapse to Dendrite, but support for Conduit would need to be built in as well.

Either way, it's unknown how long it'll take.

The tracking issue for Synapse -> Dendrite migration is all I've found. https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/issues/1705

teruakohatu• 3 years ago

What would be the minimum Digital Ocean droplet that could run this server for maybe 10 people?

Black616Angel• 3 years ago

I didn't know Digital Ocean before, but it seems like they are more focused on CPU than on disk space. This is bad, since you will need to store some data on the server, if you send any images at all. We have a matrix-server running for 4 people since maybe 2019 and it's at 60gb disk usage right now. So in that regard, 10 memers will need at least a 100gb so 24$ a month, but you can get a lot cheaper than that, using some other server hosters, which are more focused on giving you a lot of space instead.

Specs: The server we use has 4 cores (barely uses 1) and 8 gigs of RAM, 2.5 of which are currently used and 120gb of disk space, that will probably suffice for another 2-3 years.

pkulak2• 3 years ago

You can always mount in an S3 bucket and use that instead of the local drive.

tgv_hk• 3 years ago

Hi, I been running Conduit in a "Allways free" droplet at Oracle Cloud.

Its been working without problems for a single user setup (no VoIP though).

I hope you get an idea of the minimum resources needed.

nani8ot8• 3 years ago

Matrix does not need much resources per user or room But if any user joins a large room with thousands of people, the server will need to keep up with all those state events.

So 100s of users wouldn't be much of an issue if they're mostly in the same room.

lannisterstark• 3 years ago

It's still broken for bridges when compared to synapse. Bots rarely register, and sometimes you have to manually log into the account etc.

On the other hand, their dev matrix channel is very active. Props to that. Still...beta software.

devy• 3 years ago

Has anyone implemented Conduit with other backend services via the Matrix API?

https://spec.matrix.org/latest/

Any reason why it's not a good idea to integration the API with server side (aka E2E or distributed drawbacks?)

nyanpasu64• 3 years ago

On the topic of Matrix, does anyone know what causes messages to sometimes decrypt the last message until a new last message is sent (and fails to decrypt), or a single message to fail to decrypt while surrounding ones work successfully?

Arkanosis5• 3 years ago

My understanding is still imperfect, but I'll try to provide some info:

Not all messages are encrypted with the same key, so if all of your clients are not connected at the same time, and the same is true for the sender, they can't exchange their keys. When that happens, each client can only decrypt the subset of the messages for which it has the keys. Also note that clients only exchange their keys with other verified clients.

If you look at the “session_id” attribute of the JSON source of the messages, you'll see that for a given session (ie. when the sender is logged in a client), all the messages are decrypted (which means you have the key for that session) or none of them are (which means you haven't received the key for that session yet).

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

Hello, I'm Timo and I started the Conduit project a few years ago. Feel free to ask some questions.

Corsome3• 3 years ago

Do you use Conduit daily yourself? I'm wondering if it's stable for daily use.

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

Yes, I use my Conduit instance for all my development work and also host a big Discord bridge on it (for https://veloren.net, which was mentioned in another comment).

nani8ot8• 3 years ago

I've used Conduit for about a year now with bridges and it works flawlessly. It doesn't have all features but a recent release added Spaces and end-to-bridge encryption (not as big of a deal when selfhosting server + bridges, but great nonetheless), so I'm not even sure what is still missing.

MayeulC2• 3 years ago

Is there a migration path for Synapse users?

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

No, currently you have to start a completely new server. At some point after reaching a stable Conduit release we will hopefully be able to create migration paths.

3np2• 3 years ago

Thanks for checking in!

Any thoughts on matrix-p2p aka pinecone which is now being developed against dendrite? Any thoughts on "p2p-ifying" Conduit in the foreseeable future?

https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone

https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/matrix_p2p_pi...

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

P2P sounds great and I'd love to implement it when it is ready. I think Conduit is pretty well suited for this. But it will still take quite some time until Matrix is ready for p2p clients, it needs some significant protocol changes: https://arewep2pyet.com/

Arkanosis5• 3 years ago

Hi Timo!

I've been using Conduit for 10 months now and I love it. Thank you so much for it!

I've two questions:

- Is there any concern to have with regards to its future when you finish university? You seem to be by far the most active contributor and I'm worried the project is still dependent on how much time you can afford to put into it;

- What is the best way for a Rust / Linux developer to do a first impactful contribution to Conduit? With 155 open issues on GitLab at the moment and no problem really standing out for me as a user, I don't know where to start :p

Thanks!

BTW I hope you land a great job; I'd happily recommend you where I work, but we don't have any office near Dortmund unfortunately… Feel free to reach out to me if Dortmund / remote is not a requirement.

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

Thank you for the kind words!

1: I can't say how much time I will have for Conduit, but I think the project is in a good shape and I think it can reach a stable release without me working full time on it, but of course it will take longer.

2: I think a good way to start is to hang around in the Conduit Matrix room and see if any issues pop up. Often these are relatively simple things like "these logs should have more details" and are a good way to get started.

I will also use this opportunity to link my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timokoesters/

rjvs2• 3 years ago

Hi Timo, is there a document somewhere that describes how Conduit compares feature-wise to Synapse or to the Matrix spec? It’s not clear to me if the goal to develop a fully-featured matrix server, or if there is some subset of scale or functionality that you’re aiming for; could you comment on that?

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

Hi, the goal is to create a fully-featured server that works seamlessly with all Matrix clients. The one notable exception is that we will not implement support for "outdated" room versions, which means that there are some rooms that are unjoinable because they are too old, those should be upgraded to a more recent room version.

I'm also prioritizing features needed for smaller instances, instead of things like user management or horizontal scaling.

sydbarrett74• 3 years ago

Timo,

Thank you and kudos for all of your hard work on this. I will definitely be checking your project out. :)

-sydbarrett74

treyd2• 3 years ago

What would you say is your biggest frustration with Matrix's design as a protocol? I have some of my own opinions writing bots and such but I'm curious about the perspective of a homeserver implementatiom maintainer.

timokoesters9• 3 years ago

I think the model of having all events form a giant graph is overengineered. They tried to cope with this by introducing things like "fast room joins", but I think they are flawed and treat the symptom rather than the cause of the problem. Servers should only replicate the very core part of a room and fetch remaining information on demand. But I'm working together with the Matrix team to improve this in the future.

I think most other things in the spec are necessary complexity. It's annoying to work on logic for threads, spaces, read receipts, read receipts in threads and so on, but they allow Matrix to have a lot of great features.

What problems did you encounter writing bots for Matrix?

blacklight• 3 years ago

I have tried Conduit in a small test installation, I liked what I saw, and I keep following its developments.

However, I also spent a lot of time configuring my Synapse server with tons of bridges, so even though I totally get the need for more "lightweight servers" (especially in order to break the Synapse de facto monopoly on Matrix implementations), I'm unlikely to use it as a primary driver unless some killer feature (like native Fediverse integration, at least via Fedi authentication) is implemented.

libraryatnight• 3 years ago

Synapse is kind of a pain, I think I'll give this a shot.

mgaunard• 3 years ago

How does it compare to a simple IRC server?

rkagerer• 3 years ago

Are there any accessible deep-dives on Matrix speaking to how trustworthy / effective the privacy claims are, reliability of the code, etc?

parski• 3 years ago

I use Conduit with Element clients and from time to time I will have problems decrypting messages. Sometimed they'll stay unencrypted for a week. I only talk to people in a room on the official matrix.org server. They're all registered there. Does anyone else get that issue ever?

Arkanosis5• 3 years ago

My (imperfect) understanding is that this is because of how end-to-end encryption works: you not only need to receive the messages (which are stored on the server, so you don't have to worry about them as you can retrieve them when you want), but also the keys to decrypt these messages (which are only stored on the clients, so whether or not they are available depends on you).

Possibly, one of your clients has the keys needed to decrypt one of the messages, but you're using another client which doesn't. Things go back to normal when both are connected at the same time and can share the keys, or when the client of the sender is connected and still has the keys.

If you don't keep your clients connected all the time, you can use a secure backup on the server, so the clients can retrieve the encrypted keys from the server and decrypt them locally.

Not having the keys happens more often if one the parties uses short-lived sessions (like logging exclusively in a private browser window, for example).

This article helped me with understanding a little: https://gerstner.it/2021/02/matrix-and-e2e-encryption-or-how...

matrixlan• 3 years ago

Does this work over LAN?

I have never managed to self-host a Matrix server for my home because they all demand a domain name like matrix.something.com. I can't use a local address like 192.168.1.100.

derealized• 3 years ago

Supposedly it needs some name (any name) for the userID so I don't think so. You can add a domain that points to your internal IPs though.

syntaxing• 3 years ago

I have a local only synapse instance with some bridges. You can use a local domain (server hostname.localdomain) and it works. Caveat is that using element with your browser does not work. Element desktop app and phone app works fine though.

Conduit: Simple, fast and reliable chat server powered by Matrix

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