Prompted by: https://matrix.org/blog/2019/11/09/avoiding-unwelcome-visitors-on-private-matrix-servers
This is a bit controversial, because.. the Synapse default remains open,
while the general advice (as per the blog post) is to make it more private.
I'm not sure exactly what kind of server people set up and whether they
want to make the room directory public. Our general goal is to favor
privacy and security when running personal (family & friends) and corporate
homeservers, both of which likely benefit from having a more secure default.
Also discussed previously in #213 (Github Pull Request).
shared-secret-auth and rest-auth logging is still at `INFO`
intentionally, as user login events seem more important to keep.
Those modules typically don't spam as much.
Somewhat related to #213 (Github Pull Request).
We've been moving in the opposite direction for quite a long time.
All services should just leave logging to systemd's journald.
Well, `config.yaml` has been playbook-managed for a long time.
It's now extended to match the default sample config of the Discord
bridge.
With this patch, we also make `registration.yaml` playbook-managed,
which leads us to consistency with all other bridges.
Along with that, we introduce `./config` and `./data` separation,
like we do for the other bridges.
With most people on Synapse v0.99+ and Synapse v1.0 now available,
we should no longer try to be backward compatible with Synapse 0.34,
because this just complicates the instructions for no good reason.
Related to #193, but for the Facebook bridge.
(other bridges can be changed to do the same later).
This patch makes the bridge configuration entirely managed by the
Ansible playbook. The bridge's `config.yaml` and `registration.yaml`
configuration files are regenerated every time the playbook runs.
This allows us to apply updates to those files and to avoid
people having to manage the configuration files manually on the server.
-------------------------------------------------------------
A deficiency of the current approach to dumping YAML configuration in
`config.yaml` is that we strip all comments from it.
Later on, when the bridge actually starts, it will load and redump
(this time with comments), which will make the `config.yaml` file
change.
Subsequent playbook runs will report "changed" for the
"Ensure mautrix-facebook config.yaml installed" task, which is a little
strange.
We might wish to improve this in the future, if possible.
Still, it's better to have a (usually) somewhat meaningless "changed"
task than to what we had -- never rebuilding the configuration.
`matrix_nginx_proxy_data_path` has always served as a base path,
so we're renaming it to reflect that.
Along with this, we're also introducing a new "data path" variable
(`matrix_nginx_proxy_data_path`), which is really a data path this time.
It's used for storing additional, non-configuration, files related to
matrix-nginx-proxy.
This makes all containers (except mautrix-telegram and
mautrix-whatsapp), start as a non-root user.
We do this, because we don't trust some of the images.
In any case, we'd rather not trust ALL images and avoid giving
`root` access at all. We can't be sure they would drop privileges
or what they might do before they do it.
Because Postfix doesn't support running as non-root,
it had to be replaced by an Exim mail server.
The matrix-nginx-proxy nginx container image is patched up
(by replacing its main configuration) so that it can work as non-root.
It seems like there's no other good image that we can use and that is up-to-date
(https://hub.docker.com/r/nginxinc/nginx-unprivileged is outdated).
Likewise for riot-web (https://hub.docker.com/r/bubuntux/riot-web/),
we patch it up ourselves when starting (replacing the main nginx
configuration).
Ideally, it would be fixed upstream so we can simplify.
The matrix-nginx-proxy role can now be used independently.
This makes it consistent with all other roles, with
the `matrix-base` role remaining as their only dependency.
Separating matrix-nginx-proxy was relatively straightforward, with
the exception of the Mautrix Telegram reverse-proxying configuration.
Mautrix Telegram, being an extension/bridge, does not feel important enough
to justify its own special handling in matrix-nginx-proxy.
Thus, we've introduced the concept of "additional configuration blocks"
(`matrix_nginx_proxy_proxy_matrix_additional_server_configuration_blocks`),
where any module can register its own custom nginx server blocks.
For such dynamic registration to work, the order of role execution
becomes important. To make it possible for each module participating
in dynamic registration to verify that the order of execution is
correct, we've also introduced a `matrix_nginx_proxy_role_executed`
variable.
It should be noted that this doesn't make the matrix-synapse role
dependent on matrix-nginx-proxy. It's optional runtime detection
and registration, and it only happens in the matrix-synapse role
when `matrix_mautrix_telegram_enabled: true`.
With this change, the following roles are now only dependent
on the minimal `matrix-base` role:
- `matrix-corporal`
- `matrix-coturn`
- `matrix-mailer`
- `matrix-mxisd`
- `matrix-postgres`
- `matrix-riot-web`
- `matrix-synapse`
The `matrix-nginx-proxy` role still does too much and remains
dependent on the others.
Wiring up the various (now-independent) roles happens
via a glue variables file (`group_vars/matrix-servers`).
It's triggered for all hosts in the `matrix-servers` group.
According to Ansible's rules of priority, we have the following
chain of inclusion/overriding now:
- role defaults (mostly empty or good for independent usage)
- playbook glue variables (`group_vars/matrix-servers`)
- inventory host variables (`inventory/host_vars/matrix.<your-domain>`)
All roles default to enabling their main component
(e.g. `matrix_mxisd_enabled: true`, `matrix_riot_web_enabled: true`).
Reasoning: if a role is included in a playbook (especially separately,
in another playbook), it should "work" by default.
Our playbook disables some of those if they are not generally useful
(e.g. `matrix_corporal_enabled: false`).
As suggested in #63 (Github issue), splitting the
playbook's logic into multiple roles will be beneficial for
maintainability.
This patch realizes this split. Still, some components
affect others, so the roles are not really independent of one
another. For example:
- disabling mxisd (`matrix_mxisd_enabled: false`), causes Synapse
and riot-web to reconfigure themselves with other (public)
Identity servers.
- enabling matrix-corporal (`matrix_corporal_enabled: true`) affects
how reverse-proxying (by `matrix-nginx-proxy`) is done, in order to
put matrix-corporal's gateway server in front of Synapse
We may be able to move away from such dependencies in the future,
at the expense of a more complicated manual configuration, but
it's probably not worth sacrificing the convenience we have now.
As part of this work, the way we do "start components" has been
redone now to use a loop, as suggested in #65 (Github issue).
This should make restarting faster and more reliable.
This change is provoked by a few different things:
- #54 (Github Pull Request), which rightfully says that we need a
way to support ALL mxisd configuration options easily
- the upcoming mxisd 1.3.0 release, which drops support for
property-style configuration (dot-notation), forcing us to
redo the way we generate the configuration file
With this, mxisd is much more easily configurable now
and much more easily maintaneable by us in the future
(no need to introduce additional playbook variables and logic).
As suggested in #65 (Github issue), this patch switches
cronjob management from using templates to using Ansible's `cron` module.
It also moves the management of the nginx-reload cronjob to `setup_ssl_lets_encrypt.yml`,
which is a more fitting place for it (given that this cronjob is only required when
Let's Encrypt is used).
Pros:
- using a module is more Ansible-ish than templating our own files in
special directories
- more reliable: will fail early (during playbook execution) if `/usr/bin/crontab`
is not available, which is more of a guarantee that cron is working fine
(idea: we should probably install some cron package using the playbook)
Cons:
- invocation schedule is no longer configurable, unless we define individual
variables for everything or do something smart (splitting on ' ', etc.).
Likely not necessary, however.
- requires us to deprecate and clean-up after the old way of managing cronjobs,
because it's not compatible (using the same file as before means appending
additional jobs to it)
Adds support for managing certificates manually and for
having the playbook generate self-signed certificates for you.
With this, Let's Encrypt usage is no longer required.
Fixes Github issue #50.
Pretty much all variables live in their own `matrix_<whatever>`
prefix now and are grouped closer together in the default
variables file (`roles/matrix-server/defaults/main.yml`).
`--log-driver=none` is used for all Docker containers now.
All these containers are started through systemd anyway and get logged in journald,
so there's no need for Docker to be logging the same thing using the default `json-file` driver.
Doing that was growing `/var/lib/docker/containers/..` infinitely until service/container restart.
As a result of this, things like `docker logs matrix-synapse` won't work anymore.
`journalctl -u matrix-synapse` is how one can see the logs.
This disables federation on the 80 port, as it's
not necessary. We also disable the old Angular webclient.
For the federation port (8448), we disable the client APIs
as those are not necessary. Those can even cause trouble
if one doesn't know about them and thinks that guarding the client
APIs at the 80 port is enough.
Moving away from using the default bridge network to using our own.
This isolates our services from other Docker containers running
on the default network on the same host.
The benefits are that:
- isolation is a little better - we no longer share a default
bridge network with any other containers that might be running on the host
- there are no longer hard dependencies - we do service discovery
by DNS name, and not via explicit `--link` usage during container start,
so containers can start out of order and fail without bringing down others
with them
(`matrix-nginx-proxy` can continue running, even if one of the other services dies)
In the future, when other services get introduced,
the increased resilience and simplicity will help as well.
