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configuring-playbook-bridge-mautrix-bridges.md

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Setting up a Generic Mautrix Bridge (optional)

The playbook can install and configure various mautrix bridges (twitter, discord, signal, googlechat, etc.), as well as many other (non-mautrix) bridges. This is a common guide for configuring mautrix bridges.

The author of the bridges maintains the official docs, whose source code is available at mautrix/docs repository on GitHub. You may as well to refer it while configuring them.

You can see each bridge's features on the ROADMAP.md file in its corresponding mautrix repository.

Adjusting the playbook configuration

To enable the bridge, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

# Replace SERVICENAME with one of: twitter, discord, signal, googlechat, etc.
matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_enabled: true

Note: for bridging to Meta's Messenger or Instagram, you would need to add meta with an underscore symbol (_) or hyphen (-) based on the context as prefix to each SERVICENAME; add _ to variables (as in matrix_mautrix_meta_messenger_configuration_extension_yaml for example) and - to paths of the configuration files (as in roles/custom/matrix-bridge-mautrix-meta-messenger/templates/config.yaml.j2), respectively. matrix_mautrix_facebook_* and matrix_mautrix_instagram_* variables belong to the deprecated components and do not control the new bridge (mautrix-meta), which can be installed using this playbook.

There are some additional things you may wish to configure about the bridge before you continue. Each bridge may have additional requirements besides _enabled: true. For example, the mautrix-telegram bridge (our documentation page about it is here) requires the matrix_mautrix_telegram_api_id and matrix_mautrix_telegram_api_hash variables to be defined. Refer to each bridge's individual documentation page for details about enabling bridges.

Configure bridge permissions (optional)

By default any user on your homeserver will be able to use the mautrix bridges. To limit who can use them you would need to configure their permissions settings.

Different levels of permission can be granted to users. For example, to configure a user as an administrator for all bridges, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_admin: "@alice:{{ matrix_domain }}"

If you don't define the matrix_admin in your configuration (e.g. matrix_admin: @alice:example.com), then there's no admin by default.

Alternatively (more verbose, but allows multiple admins to be configured), you can do the same on a per-bridge basis with:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  bridge:
    permissions:
      '@alice:{{ matrix_domain }}': admin

This will add the admin permission to the specific user, while keeping the default permissions.

You could also redefine the default permissions settings completely, rather than adding extra permissions. You may wish to look at roles/custom/matrix-bridge-mautrix-SERVICENAME/templates/config.yaml.j2 to find information on the permission settings and other options you would like to configure.

Enable encryption (optional)

Encryption (End-to-Bridge Encryption, E2BE) support is off by default. If you would like to enable encryption, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

for all bridges with encryption support:

matrix_bridges_encryption_enabled: true
matrix_bridges_encryption_default: true

Alternatively, for a specific bridge:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_bridge_encryption_enabled: true
matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_bridge_encryption_default: true

Enable relay mode (optional)

Relay mode is off by default. Check the table on the official documentation for bridges which support relay mode.

If you would like to enable it, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

for all bridges with relay mode support:

matrix_bridges_relay_enabled: true

Alternatively, for a specific bridge:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  bridge:
    relay:
      enabled: true

You can only have one matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_configuration_extension_yaml definition in vars.yml per bridge, so if you need multiple pieces of configuration there, just merge them like this:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  bridge:
    relay:
      enabled: true
    permissions:
      '@alice:{{ matrix_domain }}': admin
    encryption:
      allow: true
      default: true

If you want to activate the relaybot in a room, send !prefix set-relay in the rooms where you want to use the bot (replace !prefix with the appropriate command prefix for the bridge, like !signal or !wa). To deactivate, send !prefix unset-relay.

Use !prefix set-pl 100 to be able for the bot to modify room settings and invite others.

Allow anyone on the homeserver to become a relay user (optional)

By default, only admins are allowed to set themselves as relay users. To allow anyone on your homeserver to set themselves as relay users, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_bridge_relay_admin_only: false

Set the bot's username (optional)

To set the bot's username, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_appservice_bot_username: "BOTNAME"

Configure the logging level (optional)

To specify the logging level, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_logging_level: warn

Replace warn with one of the following to control the verbosity of the logs generated: trace, debug, info, warn, error or fatal.

If you have issues with a service, and are requesting support, the higher levels of logging (those that appear earlier in the list, like trace) will generally be more helpful.

Extending the configuration

There are some additional things you may wish to configure about the bridge.

Take a look at:

  • roles/custom/matrix-bridge-mautrix-SERVICENAME/defaults/main.yml for some variables that you can customize via your vars.yml file
  • roles/custom/matrix-bridge-mautrix-SERVICENAME/templates/config.yaml.j2 for the bridge's default configuration. You can override settings (even those that don't have dedicated playbook variables) using the matrix_mautrix_SERVICENAME_configuration_extension_yaml variable

Installing

After configuring the playbook, run it with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,ensure-matrix-users-created,start

Notes:

  • The ensure-matrix-users-created playbook tag makes the playbook automatically create the bot's user account.

  • The shortcut commands with the just program are also available: just install-all or just setup-all

    just install-all is useful for maintaining your setup quickly (2x-5x faster than just setup-all) when its components remain unchanged. If you adjust your vars.yml to remove other components, you'd need to run just setup-all, or these components will still remain installed.

Usage

To use the bridge, you need to start a chat with @SERVICENAMEbot:example.com (where example.com is your base domain, not the matrix. domain).

For details about the next steps, refer to each bridge's individual documentation page.

Send help to the bot to see the available commands.

If you run into trouble, check the Troubleshooting section below.

Set up Double Puppeting (optional)

After successfully enabling bridging, you may wish to set up Double Puppeting (hint: you most likely do).

To set it up, you have 2 ways of going about it.

Method 1: automatically, by enabling Appservice Double Puppet (recommended)

To set up Double Puppeting, you could enable the Appservice Double Puppet service for this playbook.

Appservice Double Puppet is a homeserver appservice through which bridges (and potentially other services) can impersonate any user on the homeserver.

To enable the Appservice Double Puppet service, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_appservice_double_puppet_enabled: true

When enabled, double puppeting will automatically be enabled for all bridges that support double puppeting via the appservice method.

This is the recommended way of setting up Double Puppeting, as it's easier to accomplish, works for all your users automatically, and has less of a chance of breaking in the future.

Notes:

  • Previously there were multiple different automatic double puppeting methods like one with the help of the Shared Secret Auth password provider module, but they have been superseded by this Appservice Double Puppet method. Double puppeting with the Shared Secret Auth works at the time of writing, but is deprecated and will stop working in the future as the older methods were completely removed in the megabridge rewrites on the upstream project.

Method 2: manually, by asking each user to provide a working access token

When using this method, each user that wishes to enable Double Puppeting needs to follow the following steps:

  • retrieve a Matrix access token for yourself. Refer to the documentation on how to obtain one.

  • send the access token to the bot. Example: login-matrix MATRIX_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE

  • make sure you don't log out the session for which you obtained an access token some time in the future, as that would break the Double Puppeting feature

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting information with a specific bridge, please see the playbook documentation about it (some other document in in docs/) and the upstream (mautrix) bridge documentation for that specific bridge.

If the bridge's bot doesn't accept the invite to a chat, refer the official troubleshooting page as well.

If you found bugs in mautrix bridges, they should be reported to the upstream project, in the corresponding mautrix repository, not to us.