Running this playbook

This playbook is meant to be run using Ansible.

Ansible typically runs on your local computer and carries out tasks on a remote server. If your local computer cannot run Ansible, you can also run Ansible on some server somewhere (including the server you wish to install to).

Supported Ansible versions

To manually check which version of Ansible you're on, run: ansible --version.

For the best experience, we recommend getting the latest version of Ansible available.

We're not sure what's the minimum version of Ansible that can run this playbook successfully. The lowest version that we've confirmed (on 2022-11-26) to be working fine is: ansible-core (2.11.7) combined with ansible (4.10.0).

If your distro ships with an Ansible version older than this, you may run into issues. Consider Upgrading Ansible or using Ansible via Docker.

Upgrading Ansible

Depending on your distribution, you may be able to upgrade Ansible in a few different ways:

by using an additional repository (PPA, etc.), which provides newer Ansible versions. See instructions for CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu on the Ansible website.
by removing the Ansible package (yum remove ansible or apt-get remove ansible) and installing via pip (pip install ansible).

If using the pip method, do note that the ansible-playbook binary may not be on the $PATH (https://linuxconfig.org/linux-path-environment-variable), but in some more special location like /usr/local/bin/ansible-playbook. You may need to invoke it using the full path.

Note: Both of the above methods are a bad way to run system software such as Ansible. If you find yourself needing to resort to such hacks, please consider reporting a bug to your distribution and/or switching to a sane distribution, which provides up-to-date software.

Using Ansible via Docker

Alternatively, you can run Ansible inside a Docker container (powered by the devture/ansible Docker image).

This ensures that you're using a very recent Ansible version, which is less likely to be incompatible with the playbook.

You can either run Ansible in a container on the Matrix server itself or run Ansible in a container on another computer (not the Matrix server).

Running Ansible in a container on the Matrix server itself

To run Ansible in a (Docker) container on the Matrix server itself, you need to have a working Docker installation. Docker is normally installed by the playbook, so this may be a bit of a chicken and egg problem. To solve it:

you either need to install Docker manually first. Follow the upstream instructions for your distribution and consider setting matrix_playbook_docker_installation_enabled: false in your vars.yml file, to prevent the playbook from installing Docker
or you need to run the playbook in another way (e.g. Running Ansible in a container on another computer (not the Matrix server)) at least the first time around

Once you have a working Docker installation on the server, clone the playbook somewhere on the server and configure it as per usual (inventory/hosts, inventory/host_vars/.., etc.), as described in configuring the playbook.

You would then need to add ansible_connection=community.docker.nsenter to the host line in inventory/hosts. This tells Ansible to connect to the "remote" machine by switching Linux namespaces with nsenter, instead of using SSH. Alternatively, you can leave your inventory/hosts as is and specify the connection type in each ansible-playbook call you do later, like this: ansible-playbook --connection=community.docker.nsenter ...

Run this from the playbook's directory:

docker run -it --rm \
--privileged \
--pid=host \
-w /work \
-v `pwd`:/work \
--entrypoint=/bin/sh \
docker.io/devture/ansible:2.13.6-r0-3

Once you execute the above command, you'll be dropped into a /work directory inside a Docker container. The /work directory contains the playbook's code.

First, consider running git config --global --add safe.directory /work to resolve directory ownership issues.

Finally, you can execute ansible-playbook ... (or ansible-playbook --connection=community.docker.nsenter ...) commands as per normal now.

Running Ansible in a container on another computer (not the Matrix server)

Run this from the playbook's directory:

docker run -it --rm \
-w /work \
-v `pwd`:/work \
-v $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa:/root/.ssh/id_rsa:ro \
--entrypoint=/bin/sh \
docker.io/devture/ansible:2.13.6-r0-3

The above command tries to mount an SSH key ($HOME/.ssh/id_rsa) into the container (at /root/.ssh/id_rsa). If your SSH key is at a different path (not in $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa), adjust that part.

Once you execute the above command, you'll be dropped into a /work directory inside a Docker container. The /work directory contains the playbook's code.

First, consider running git config --global --add safe.directory /work to resolve directory ownership issues.

Finally, you execute ansible-playbook ... commands as per normal now.

If you don't use SSH keys for authentication

If you don't use SSH keys for authentication, simply remove that whole line (-v $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa:/root/.ssh/id_rsa:ro). To authenticate at your server using a password, you need to add a package. So, when you are in the shell of the ansible docker container (the previously used docker run -it ... command), run:

apk add sshpass

Then, to be asked for the password whenever running an ansible-playbook command add --ask-pass to the arguments of the command.

Resolve directory ownership issues

Because you're root in the container running Ansible and this likely differs fom the owner (your regular user account) of the playbook directory outside of the container, certain playbook features which use git locally may report warnings such as:

fatal: unsafe repository ('/work' is owned by someone else) To add an exception for this directory, call: git config --global --add safe.directory /work

These errors can be resolved by making git trust the playbook directory by running git config --global --add safe.directory /work

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