Generic deployment documentation

Getting help

If you run into any problems while setting up Continuwuity, ask us in #continuwuity:continuwuity.org or open an issue on Forgejo.

Installing Continuwuity

Static prebuilt binary

You may simply download the binary that fits your machine architecture (x86_64 or aarch64). Run uname -m to see what you need.

You can download prebuilt fully static musl binaries from the latest tagged release here or from the main CI branch workflow artifact output. These also include Debian/Ubuntu packages.

You can download these directly using curl. The ci-bins are CI workflow binaries organized by commit hash/revision, and releases are tagged releases. Sort by descending last modified date to find the latest.

These binaries have jemalloc and io_uring statically linked and included with them, so no additional dynamic dependencies need to be installed.

For the best performance: if you are using an x86_64 CPU made in the last ~15 years, we recommend using the -haswell- optimized binaries. These set -march=haswell, which provides the most compatible and highest performance with optimized binaries. The database backend, RocksDB, benefits most from this as it uses hardware-accelerated CRC32 hashing/checksumming, which is critical for performance.

Compiling

Alternatively, you may compile the binary yourself.

Building with the Rust toolchain

If wanting to build using standard Rust toolchains, make sure you install:

(On linux) liburing-dev on the compiling machine, and liburing on the target host
(On linux) pkg-config on the compiling machine to allow finding liburing
A C++ compiler and (on linux) libclang for RocksDB

You can build Continuwuity using cargo build --release --all-features.

Building with Nix

If you prefer, you can use Nix (or Lix) to build Continuwuity. This provides improved reproducibility and makes it easy to set up a build environment and generate output. This approach also allows for easy cross-compilation.

You can run the nix build -L .#static-x86_64-linux-musl-all-features or nix build -L .#static-aarch64-linux-musl-all-features commands based on architecture to cross-compile the necessary static binary located at result/bin/conduwuit. This is reproducible with the static binaries produced in our CI.

Adding a Continuwuity user

While Continuwuity can run as any user, it is better to use dedicated users for different services. This also ensures that the file permissions are set up correctly.

In Debian, you can use this command to create a Continuwuity user:

sudo adduser --system continuwuity --group --disabled-login --no-create-home

For distros without adduser (or where it's a symlink to useradd):

sudo useradd -r --shell /usr/bin/nologin --no-create-home continuwuity

Forwarding ports in the firewall or the router

Matrix's default federation port is 8448, and clients must use port 443. If you would like to use only port 443 or a different port, you will need to set up delegation. Continuwuity has configuration options for delegation, or you can configure your reverse proxy to manually serve the necessary JSON files for delegation (see the [global.well_known] config section).

If Continuwuity runs behind a router or in a container and has a different public IP address than the host system, you need to forward these public ports directly or indirectly to the port mentioned in the configuration.

Note for NAT users: if you have trouble connecting to your server from inside your network, check if your router supports "NAT hairpinning" or "NAT loopback".

If your router does not support this feature, you need to research doing local DNS overrides and force your Matrix DNS records to use your local IP internally. This can be done at the host level using /etc/hosts. If you need this to be on the network level, consider something like NextDNS or Pi-Hole.

Setting up a systemd service

You can find two example systemd units for Continuwuity on the configuration page. You may need to change the ExecStart= path to match where you placed the Continuwuity binary if it is not in /usr/bin/conduwuit.

On systems where rsyslog is used alongside journald (i.e. Red Hat-based distros and OpenSUSE), put $EscapeControlCharactersOnReceive off inside /etc/rsyslog.conf to allow color in logs.

If you are using a different database_path than the systemd unit's configured default /var/lib/conduwuit, you need to add your path to the systemd unit's ReadWritePaths=. You can do this by either directly editing conduwuit.service and reloading systemd, or by running systemctl edit conduwuit.service and entering the following:

[Service]
ReadWritePaths=/path/to/custom/database/path

Creating the Continuwuity configuration file

Now you need to create the Continuwuity configuration file in /etc/continuwuity/continuwuity.toml. You can find an example configuration at conduwuit-example.toml.

Please take a moment to read the config. You need to change at least the server name.

RocksDB is the only supported database backend.

Setting the correct file permissions

If you are using a dedicated user for Continuwuity, you need to allow it to read the configuration. To do this, run:

sudo chown -R root:root /etc/conduwuit
sudo chmod -R 755 /etc/conduwuit

If you use the default database path you also need to run this:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/conduwuit/
sudo chown -R continuwuity:continuwuity /var/lib/conduwuit/
sudo chmod 700 /var/lib/conduwuit/

Setting up the Reverse Proxy

We recommend Caddy as a reverse proxy because it is trivial to use and handles TLS certificates, reverse proxy headers, etc. transparently with proper defaults. For other software, please refer to their respective documentation or online guides.

Caddy

After installing Caddy via your preferred method, create /etc/caddy/conf.d/conduwuit_caddyfile and enter the following (substitute your actual server name):

your.server.name, your.server.name:8448 {
    # TCP reverse_proxy
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:6167
    # UNIX socket
    #reverse_proxy unix//run/conduwuit/conduwuit.sock
}

That's it! Just start and enable the service and you're set.

sudo systemctl enable --now caddy

Other Reverse Proxies

As we prefer our users to use Caddy, we do not provide configuration files for other proxies.

You will need to reverse proxy everything under the following routes:

/_matrix/ - core Matrix C-S and S-S APIs
/_conduwuit/ and/or /_continuwuity/ - ad-hoc Continuwuity routes such as /local_user_count and /server_version

You can optionally reverse proxy the following individual routes:

/.well-known/matrix/client and /.well-known/matrix/server if using Continuwuity to perform delegation (see the [global.well_known] config section)
/.well-known/matrix/support if using Continuwuity to send the homeserver admin contact and support page (formerly known as MSC1929)
/ if you would like to see hewwo from conduwuit woof! at the root

See the following spec pages for more details on these files:

Examples of delegation:

For Apache and Nginx there are many examples available online.

Lighttpd is not supported as it appears to interfere with the X-Matrix Authorization header, making federation non-functional. If you find a workaround, please share it so we can add it to this documentation.

If using Apache, you need to use nocanon in your ProxyPass directive to prevent httpd from interfering with the X-Matrix header (note that Apache is not ideal as a general reverse proxy, so we discourage using it if alternatives are available).

If using Nginx, you need to pass the request URI to Continuwuity using $request_uri, like this:

proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6167$request_uri;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6167;

Nginx users need to increase the client_max_body_size setting (default is 1M) to match the max_request_size defined in conduwuit.toml.

You're done

Now you can start Continuwuity with:

sudo systemctl start conduwuit

Set it to start automatically when your system boots with:

sudo systemctl enable conduwuit

How do I know it works?

You can open a Matrix client, enter your homeserver address, and try to register.

You can also use these commands as a quick health check (replace your.server.name).

curl https://your.server.name/_conduwuit/server_version

# If using port 8448
curl https://your.server.name:8448/_conduwuit/server_version

# If federation is enabled
curl https://your.server.name:8448/_matrix/federation/v1/version

To check if your server can communicate with other homeservers, use the Matrix Federation Tester. If you can register but cannot join federated rooms, check your configuration and verify that port 8448 is open and forwarded correctly.

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