How to Install Synapse on NetBSD

Synapse is a popular open-source Matrix server that allows users to communicate securely through the decentralized Matrix network. In this tutorial, we'll go through the process of installing Synapse on NetBSD.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, you'll need to make sure that your NetBSD system is up-to-date and has some basic packages installed. You'll need:

• A NetBSD system with root access
• Basic packages: gcc, make, pkgin

Step 1: Install Python

Synapse is written in Python, so we need to make sure that Python is installed on our system. We can do this by running:

$ pkgin install python37

This will install Python 3.7 on your system. You can check that it is installed correctly by running:

$ python3 --version

This should output something like Python 3.7.x.

Step 2: Install PostgreSQL

Synapse uses PostgreSQL as its database backend, so we'll need to install that as well. We'll install both the server and the client utilities:

$ pkgin install postgresql12-server postgresql12-client

Once the installation is complete, we need to initialize the PostgreSQL database cluster:

$ su postgres -c '/usr/pkg/bin/initdb -D /var/postgresql/data'

Step 3: Create a Synapse User

It's a good practice to create a separate user to run the Synapse server. This will reduce the risk of accidental data loss or corruption. Let's create a user called synapse:

$ useradd -m synapse

Step 4: Install Synapse

We're now ready to install Synapse itself. You can either download the source code from the Synapse website, or use git to clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse.git

Then, change into the synapse directory:

$ cd synapse

We'll use pip to install the necessary Python packages. First, update pip:

$ python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip

Then, install the dependencies:

$ python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Step 5: Configure Synapse

We'll now create the Synapse configuration file. Copy the example configuration file to a new file called homeserver.yaml:

$ cp homeserver.sample.yaml homeserver.yaml

We can use our favorite text editor to edit this file. For example, to use PostgreSQL as our database backend, modify the following lines:

database:
  name: psycopg2
  args:
    user: synapse
    password: your-postgresql-password-here
    database: synapse
    host: /tmp
    cp_min: 5
    cp_max: 10

Replace your-postgresql-password-here with the password you want to use for the synapse user.

Step 6: Run Synapse

We can now start the Synapse server:

$ python3 -m synapse.app.homeserver --server-name=your.server.name --config-path=homeserver.yaml

Replace your.server.name with the name of your server. This will start the server in the foreground. You can use Ctrl + C to stop the server.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you have now successfully installed Synapse on NetBSD! You can now connect to your Matrix server and start communicating with your friends and colleagues. Happy chatting!

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