Can you double check that the way I have this set only exposes it locally? It is important that the manhole is not available to the outside world since it is quite powerful and the password is hard coded.
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.
matrix_synapse_storage_path is already defined in matrix-synapse/defaults/main.yml (with a default of "{{ matrix_synapse_base_path }}/storage"), but was not being used for its presumed purpose in matrix-synapse.service.j2. As a result, if matrix_synapse_storage_path was overridden (in a vars.yml), the synapse service failed to start.
ef5e4ad061 intentionally makes us conform to
the logging format suggested by the official Docker image.
Reverting this part, because it's uglier.
This likely should be fixed upstream as well though.
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.
Using `|to_json` on a string is expected to correctly wrap it in quotes (e.g. `"4"`).
Wrapping it explicitly in double-quotes results in undesirable double-quoting (`""4""`).
Bridges start matrix-synapse.service as a dependency, but
Synapse is sometimes slow to start, while bridges are quick to
hit it and die (if unavailable).
They'll auto-restart later, but .. this still breaks `--tags=start`,
which doesn't wait long enough for such a restart to happen.
This attempts to slow down bridge startup enough to ensure Synapse
is up and no failures happen at all.
Attempt to fix#192 (Github Issue), potential regression since
70487061f4.
Serializing as JSON/YAML explicitly is much better than relying on
magic (well, Python serialization being valid YAML..).
It seems like Python may prefix strings with `u` sometimes (Python 3?),
which causes Python serialization to not be compatible with YAML.
Reasoning is the same as for matrix-org/synapse#5023.
For us, the journal used to contain `docker` for all services, which
is not very helpful when looking at them all together (`journalctl -f`).
- matrix_enable_room_list_search - Controls whether searching the public room list is enabled.
- matrix_alias_creation_rules - Controls who's allowed to create aliases on this server.
- matrix_room_list_publication_rules - Controls who can publish and which rooms can be published in the public room list.
This allows overriding the default value for `include_content`. Setting
this to false allows homeserver admins to ensure that message content
isn't sent in the clear through third party servers.
`matrix_synapse_no_tls` is now implicit, so we've gotten rid of it.
The `homeserver.yaml.j2` template has been synchronized with the
configuration generated by Synapse v0.99.1 (some new options
are present, etc.)
For consistency with all our other listeners,
we make this one bind on the `::` address too
(both IPv4 and IPv6).
Additional details are in #91 (Github Pull Request).
We run containers as a non-root user (no effective capabilities).
Still, if a setuid binary is available in a container image, it could
potentially be used to give the user the default capabilities that the
container was started with. For Docker, the default set currently is:
- "CAP_CHOWN"
- "CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE"
- "CAP_FSETID"
- "CAP_FOWNER"
- "CAP_MKNOD"
- "CAP_NET_RAW"
- "CAP_SETGID"
- "CAP_SETUID"
- "CAP_SETFCAP"
- "CAP_SETPCAP"
- "CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE"
- "CAP_SYS_CHROOT"
- "CAP_KILL"
- "CAP_AUDIT_WRITE"
We'd rather prevent such a potential escalation by dropping ALL
capabilities.
The problem is nicely explained here: https://github.com/projectatomic/atomic-site/issues/203
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.
We do match the defaults anyway (by default that is),
but people can customize `matrix_user_uid` and `matrix_user_uid`
and it wouldn't be correct then.
In any case, it's better to be explicit about such an important thing.
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`).
We've previously changed a bunch of lists in `homeserver.yaml.j2`
to be serialized using `|to_nice_yaml`, as that generates a more
readable list in YAML.
`matrix_synapse_federation_domain_whitelist`, however, couldn't have
been changed to that, as it can potentially be an empty list.
We may be able to differentiate between empty and non-empty now
and serialize it accordingly (favoring `|to_nice_yaml` if non-empty),
but it's not important enough to be justified. Thus, always
serializing with `|to_json`.
Fixes#78 (Github issue)
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.
