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This documentation site is for the versions of Dendrite maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation (github.com/matrix-org/dendrite), available under the Apache 2.0 licence.

If you are interested in the documentation for a later version of Dendrite, please refer to https://element-hq.github.io/dendrite/.

Creating user accounts

User accounts can be created on a Dendrite instance in a number of ways.

From the command line

The create-account tool is built in the bin folder when building Dendrite.

It uses the dendrite.yaml configuration file to connect to a running Dendrite instance and requires shared secret registration to be enabled as explained below.

An example of using create-account to create a normal account:

./bin/create-account -config /path/to/dendrite.yaml -username USERNAME

You will be prompted to enter a new password for the new account.

To create a new admin account, add the -admin flag:

./bin/create-account -config /path/to/dendrite.yaml -username USERNAME -admin

By default create-account uses http://localhost:8008 to connect to Dendrite, this can be overwritten using the -url flag:

./bin/create-account -config /path/to/dendrite.yaml -username USERNAME -url https://localhost:8448

An example of using create-account when running in Docker, having found the CONTAINERNAME from docker ps:

docker exec -it CONTAINERNAME /usr/bin/create-account -config /path/to/dendrite.yaml -username USERNAME

docker exec -it CONTAINERNAME /usr/bin/create-account -config /path/to/dendrite.yaml -username USERNAME -admin

Using shared secret registration

Dendrite supports the Synapse-compatible shared secret registration endpoint.

To enable shared secret registration, you must first enable it in the dendrite.yaml configuration file by specifying a shared secret. In the client_api section of the config, enter a new secret into the registration_shared_secret field:

client_api:
  # ...
  registration_shared_secret: ""

You can then use the /_synapse/admin/v1/register endpoint as per the Synapse documentation.

Shared secret registration is only enabled once a secret is configured. To disable shared secret registration again, remove the secret from the configuration file.