matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/docs/configuring-playbook-synapse.md

Configuring Synapse (optional)

By default, this playbook configures the Synapse Matrix server, so that it works for the general case. If that's enough for you, you can skip this document.

The playbook provides lots of customization variables you could use to change Synapse's settings.

Their defaults are defined in roles/matrix-synapse/defaults/main.yml and they ultimately end up in the generated /matrix/synapse/config/homeserver.yaml file (on the server). This file is generated from the roles/matrix-synapse/templates/synapse/homeserver.yaml.j2 template.

If there's an existing variable which controls a setting you wish to change, you can simply define that variable in your configuration file (inventory/host_vars/matrix.<your-domain>/vars.yml) and re-run the playbook to apply the changes.

Alternatively, if there is no pre-defined variable for a Synapse setting you wish to change:

• you can either request a variable to be created (or you can submit such a contribution yourself). Keep in mind that it's probably not a good idea to create variables for each one of Synapse's various settings that rarely get used.

• or, you can extend and override the default configuration (homeserver.yaml.j2) by making use of the matrix_synapse_configuration_extension_yaml variable. You can find information about this in roles/matrix-synapse/defaults/main.yml.

• or, if extending the configuration is still not powerful enough for your needs, you can override the configuration completely using matrix_synapse_configuration (or matrix_synapse_configuration_yaml). You can find information about this in roles/matrix-synapse/defaults/main.yml.

Load balancing with workers

To have synapse gracefully handle thousands of users, worker support should be enabled. It factors out some homeserver tasks and spreads the load of incoming client and server-to-server traffic between multiple processes. More information can be found at https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/docs/workers.md (which, coincidentally, also is the file which an awk script extracts the endpoint URLs from when running with tag setup-synapse).

To enable synapse worker support, set

matrix_synapse_workers_enabled: true

in your inventory/host_vars/matrix.DOMAIN/vars.yml file. There, you can also override the default matrix_synapse_workers_enabled_list from roles/matrix-synapse/defaults/main.yml.

If you are not using the inbuilt nginx proxy container but an instance managed by yourself, you are currently on your own as the template needs yet to be adapted to better support this use case.

In case any problems occur, make sure to have a look at the list of synapse issues about workers and your journalctl --unit 'matrix-*'.

Synapse Admin

Certain Synapse administration tasks (managing users and rooms, etc.) can be performed via a web user-interace, if you install Synapse Admin.