Setting up Sygnal (optional)

The playbook can install and configure the Sygnal push gateway for you.

See the project's documentation to learn what it does and why it might be useful to you.

Note: most people don't need to install their own gateway. As Sygnal's Notes for application developers documentation says:

It is not feasible to allow end-users to configure their own Sygnal instance, because the Sygnal instance needs the appropriate FCM or APNs secrets that belong to the application.

This optional playbook component is only useful to people who develop/build their own Matrix client applications themselves.

Decide on a domain and path

By default, Sygnal is configured to use its own dedicated domain (sygnal.DOMAIN) and requires you to adjust your DNS records.

You can override the domain and path like this:

# Switch to the domain used for Matrix services (`matrix.DOMAIN`),
# so we won't need to add additional DNS records for Sygnal.
matrix_sygnal_hostname: "{{ matrix_server_fqn_matrix }}"

# Expose under the /sygnal subpath
matrix_sygnal_path_prefix: /sygnal

NOTE: When using matrix-nginx-proxy instead of Traefik, you won't be able to override the path prefix. You can only override the domain, but that needs to happen using another variable: matrix_server_fqn_sygnal (e.g. matrix_server_fqn_sygnal: "push.{{ matrix_domain }}").

Adjusting DNS records

Once you've decided on the domain and path, you may need to adjust your DNS records to point the Sygnal domain to the Matrix server.

If you've decided to reuse the matrix. domain, you won't need to do any extra DNS configuration.

Adjusting the playbook configuration

Add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.DOMAIN/vars.yml file (adapt to your needs):

matrix_sygnal_enabled: true

# You need at least 1 app defined.
# The configuration below is incomplete. Read more below.
matrix_sygnal_apps:
  com.example.myapp.ios:
    type: apns
    keyfile: /data/my_key.p8
    # .. more configuration ..
  com.example.myapp.android:
    type: gcm
    api_key: your_api_key_for_gcm
    # .. more configuration ..

matrix_aux_file_definitions:
  - dest: "{{ matrix_sygnal_data_path }}/my_key.p8"
    content: |
      some
      content
      here      
    mode: '0600'
    owner: "{{ matrix_user_username }}"
    group: "{{ matrix_user_groupname }}"

For a more complete example of available fields and values they can take, see roles/custom/matrix-sygnal/templates/sygnal.yaml.j2 (or the upstream sygnal.yaml.sample configuration file).

Configuring GCM/FCM is easier, as it only requires that you provide some config values.

To configure APNS (Apple Push Notification Service), you'd need to provide one or more certificate files. To do that, the above example configuration:

makes use of the matrix-aux role (and its matrix_aux_file_definitions variable) to make the playbook install files into /matrix/sygnal/data (the matrix_sygnal_data_path variable). See roles/custom/matrix-aux/defaults/main.yml for usage examples. It also makes sure the files are owned by matrix:matrix, so that Sygnal can read them. Of course, you can also install these files manually yourself, if you'd rather not use matrix-aux.
references these files in the Sygnal configuration (matrix_sygnal_apps) using a path like /data/.. (the /matrix/sygnal/data directory on the host system is mounted into the /data directory inside the container)

Installing

After configuring the playbook and potentially adjusting your DNS records, run the installation command:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,start

Usage

To make use of your Sygnal installation, you'd need to build your own Matrix client application, which uses the same API keys (for GCM/FCM) and certificates (for APNS) and is to your Sygnal URL endpoint (e.g. https://sygnal.DOMAIN).

Refer to Sygnal's Notes for application developers document.

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