About

On this page I aim to collect some general info about my Matrix instance.

While my server does not offer open registrations I'm open to provide accounts to friends and mutuals, if you are interested you can contact me on any of the platforms listed here.

My server is running Dendrite on a homelab server (Intel Xeon E3-1270, 32GB memory) in my livingroom, aside from regular updates and backups I don't expect major unplanned outages.

In addition to the server itself I'm also hosting two web clients:

• Element at chat.squirrel.rocks
• Cinny at cinny.squirrel.rock

Rules

When given an account on my instance I expect you to adhere to the following guidelines.

If you get reported to me for breaking any of the rules set here, or the rules of someone else's community you may join using my server, there's a high chance you'll loose your account.

• I will not tolerate intolerance
  Spreading and advocating Racism, Sexism, Ableism, Queer-, Trans-, Xenophobia, you get the picture, have no place here.
• No Spam / Scam / excessive advertising
  This includes crypto currencies and NFTs: No Fucking Thanks.
• No harassment
  • Do not continue to engage in conversation after having been told off.
  • Do not aggregate and share others personal data against their will (doxxing).
  • No block / ban evasion, meaning do not create new accounts to join rooms / communities that you have been previously banned from.

Getting started

I recommend you to do the following steps with Element, i.e. the one I'm running at chat.squirrel.rocks.
Other clients should have similar functions but with this one I'm most familiar and can help if needed.

Change your password!

Because I don't allow self-service registration you will receive an initial password from me,
change it as soon as you log in for the first time!
To do so go to the Settings, there you will find a Change Password form in the General section.

Remove old sessions

Due to the way account creation works new accounts will have a session with the ID "shared_secret_registration", this is safe to remove.
To do so, go to Settings -> Security & Privacy, there you'll find a list of all logged in sessions.
Tick the checkbox of the session you want to remove and confirm with the "Sign out selected device" button.

Set up encryption key backup

This part is important to not loose access to your messages in case you loose your sessions.
To check if key backup is enabled and set it up if it isn't, go to Settings -> Security & Privacy, there you will find Secure Backup and Cross- signing in the Encryption section.
If the backup is not enabled yet you can start the setup by clicking the Set up button, which will then guide you through the process.



Once the setup process is complete you will see a green checkmark saying "This session is backing up your keys." in the Secure Backup section and another saying "Cross-signing ready for use." in the Cross-signing section.
Make sure to safely store the key you set in the setup process, ideally in your password manager.

Stickers

Since stickers on Matrix are still relatively new and questions how to find some and use them come up frequently I set up a small page going into a little more detail here.