I've not found this welcome bot to work at all in my previous attempts.
It would simply not reply, even though federation works.

It seems like this is also a potential privacy issue, as per
https://gist.github.com/maxidorius/5736fd09c9194b7a6dc03b6b8d7220d0

We do use some `:latest` images by default for the following services:
- matrix-dimension
- Goofys (in the matrix-synapse role)
- matrix-bridge-appservice-irc
- matrix-bridge-appservice-discord
- matrix-bridge-mautrix-facebook
- matrix-bridge-mautrix-whatsapp

It's terribly unfortunate that those software projects don't release
anything other than `:latest`, but that's how it is for now.

Updating that software requires that users manually do `docker pull`
on the server. The playbook didn't force-repull images that it already
had.

With this patch, it starts doing so. Any image tagged `:latest` will be
force re-pulled by the playbook every time it's executed.

It should be noted that even though we ask the `docker_image` module to
force-pull, it only reports "changed" when it actually pulls something
new. This is nice, because it lets people know exactly when something
gets updated, as opposed to giving the indication that it's always
updating the images (even though it isn't).

Fixes #171 (Github Issue).

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`).

Use Jinja2 lstrip_blocks option in templates to ensure consistent
indentation in generated files.

This prevents Ansible from sometimes failing to decrypt vault variables

By default, `--tags=self-check` no longer validates certificates
when `matrix_ssl_retrieval_method` is set to `self-signed`.

Besides this default, people can also enable/disable validation using the
individual role variables manually.

Fixes #124 (Github Issue)

Fixes #69 (Github Issue)

Some resources shouldn't be cached right now,
as per https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/pull/8702

(note all of the suggestions from that pull request were applied,
because some of them do not seem relevant - no such files)

Fixes #98 (Github Issue)

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.

Fixes #83 (Github issue)

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`).

Riot-web parses integrations_widgets_urls as a list, thus causing it to incorrectly think Scalar widgets are non-Scalar and not passing the scalar token

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.