Some SOGS operators may want to setup a room on their SOGS which features one way style communication, these rooms allow moderators and administrators to update the room with new messages, but disallows unprivileged users to send new messages. These sorts of rooms can be useful for providing updates or information.
1. Create a new room
*Skip to step 3 if you already have a room and you are an administrator in that room*
Replace TOKEN with the address to use in the room URL (which must consist of ONLY lowercase letters, numbers, underscores, or dashes), replace NAME with the room name to display in Session and optionally replace DESCRIPTION with a short description of the topic of the room.
2. Ensure you are an administrator of the room
replacing TOKEN with the room token you created in step 1 and replacing ACCOUNTID with your own Account ID
3. Alter room permissions
There are 4 types of permission currently available in rooms
r = Read (ability to read messages)
w = Write (ability to write new messages)
u = Upload (ability to upload attachments, including files, voice notes, images and videos)
When modifying these permissions changes will only apply to non admins/moderators, the default permissions in a room will be "rwua" for all users
To create a read only group we want to remove regular users ability to write and upload attachments, we can do this using the following command
This command will ensure read and access permissions are provided and remove write and upload permissions for regular users.
As the permission changes do not affect administrators and moderators, they will still be able to read, write and upload to the group. New Account ID's can be given write/upload access by making those Account ID's moderator or admin, this can be done directly in the Session Desktop client or via the .
echo "deb https://deb.oxen.io $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oxen.list
3. Update repositories
sudo apt update
4. Install Session
Updating Session
If you want to update Session, you can run the following commands
then
sudo apt install session-desktop
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Session Open Group Server Setup
Session open groups servers (SOGS) are group chat servers that can host thousands of chat participants. This guide explains how to set up a Session open group server.
Note: Session open group servers provide transit encryption, but open group messages are not encrypted while stored on the server; closed groups (which can be created within Session itself) are a better solution for high-security communications with groups of 100 or less people.
Open groups are hosted using PySOGS. Written in Python, PySOGS is the reference implementation of a Session open group server. PySOGS is used to run the official Session open groups, and is the officially supported open group server.
Below you can find a video guide walking you through the process of setting up a Session open group server, as well as a written guide.
Installation
Note: .debs for the Session Open Group server are currently available for Ubuntu 20.04 and newer, and for Debian 10 and newer. For other operating systems, you can
Video Guide
1. Find a suitable server to run SOGS
Typically, the simplest and cheapest way to host a server is by leasing a Virtual Private Server (VPS). There are hundreds of VPS providers to choose from, some popular options are: Vultr, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Amazon Lightsail, etc.
You can run a SOGS from home, but consider most consumer internet connections have poor upstream bandwidth, typically don't provide a static IP address, and transient power and network outages are a relatively common. These factors can affect the stability of your SOGS and the ability for users to chat in your group.
Resource requirements are highly dependent on how many users you plan to support in your open groups and how frequent usage is, however, a good starting point would be:
1 Virtual core, 512 MB of RAM, 20GB HDD space
Once you have signed up for a provider you should receive a static IP address, you will need to SSH into your server, you can find instructions on how to do this online.
2. Add Oxen apt repository
Add the Oxen apt repository by running the following commands
3. Install
You have a choice to install either the sogs-standalone package or the sogs-proxied package.
sogs-standalone
This is the simple SOGS package for most setups. It installs a SOGS that listens on a public IP/port for HTTP connections. It does not support HTTPS connections (but since all messages to/from SOGS are separately encrypted, HTTPS is not necessary nor recommended).
sogs-proxied
This package provides a more advanced SOGS configuration where SOGS itself will listen on an internal port and expects to have requests proxied to it from an ngnix or apache2 front-end server that listens on the public IP/port. The package will install basic site configuration files for either nginx or apache2, but extra configuration may be necessary.
This package is required if you want your SOGS to be reached over HTTPS: the HTTPS handling is configured on the front-end server (i.e. in nginx or apache) using a tool such as certbot. (This package does not auto-configure such HTTPS certificates, but there are many online help pages on setting up such HTTPS support for a front-end web server).
If you don't know what any of this means then stick with the sogs-standalone package.
OR
If installing the standalone version you will see this prompt, asking you to enter a URL or IP address, if you have not setup DNS to point towards the IP address of your VPS then you should enter your VPS Public IP address, which can usually be found on your VPS provider's website.
4. Add a room
Once finished with installation, you will want to add a room, to add a room run:
Replace TOKEN with the address to use in the room URL (which must consist of ONLY lowercase letters, numbers, underscores, or dashes), replace NAME with the room name to display in Session and optionally replace DESCRIPTION with a short description of the topic of the room.
As an example, setting up a room for discussion of Australian fisheries
5. Make yourself an administrator
Make yourself a global administrator for all rooms hosted on your SOGS by running the following:
Replace SESSIONID with the Account ID you want to be an administrator
For example:
6. Join your SOGS
Once setup, you should be able to navigate to your VPS's IP address in a web browser, for example
Here you should see a list of your rooms, clicking on a room will display a QR code and the link required to join the room, this link can be copied and pasted into a Session client to join a group.
Upgrading SOGS
SOGS is configured as a Debian package, it will be updated when you update and upgrade other packages on your system, you can trigger this process by running the following commands
Having Issues?
If you're having trouble setting up your SOGS, we recommend opening an issue on the GitHub repository. Contributors to the PySOGS software should be able to assist you in getting everything up and running.
