These are just defensive cleanup tasks that we run.
In the good case, there's nothing to kill or remove, so they trigger an
error like this:
> Error response from daemon: Cannot kill container: something: No such container: something
and:
> Error: No such container: something
People often ask us if this is a problem, so instead of always having to
answer with "no, this is to be expected", we'd rather eliminate it now
and make logs cleaner.
In the event that:
- a container is really stuck and needs cleanup using kill/rm
- and cleanup fails, and we fail to report it because of error
suppression (`2>/dev/null`)
.. we'd still get an error when launching ("container name already in use .."),
so it shouldn't be too hard to investigate.
Fixes https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/issues/756
Related to https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/issues/737
I feel like timers are somewhat more complicated and dirty (compared to
cronjobs), but they come with these benefits:
- log output goes to journald
- on newer systemd distros, you can see when the timer fired, when it
will fire, etc.
- we don't need to rely on cron (reducing our dependencies to just
systemd + Docker)
Cronjobs work well, but it's one more dependency that needs to be
installed. We were even asking people to install it manually
(in `docs/prerequisites.md`), which could have gone unnoticed.
Once in a while someone says "my SSL certificates didn't renew"
and it's likely because they forgot to install a cron daemon.
Switching to systemd timers means that installation is simpler
and more unified.
The Docker 19.04 -> 20.10 upgrade contains the following change
in `/usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service`:
```
-BindsTo=containerd.service
-After=network-online.target firewalld.service containerd.service
+After=network-online.target firewalld.service containerd.service multi-user.target
-Requires=docker.socket
+Requires=docker.socket containerd.service
Wants=network-online.target
```
The `multi-user.target` requirement in `After` seems to be in conflict
with our `WantedBy=multi-user.target` and `After=docker.service` /
`Requires=docker.service` definitions, causing the following error on
startup for all of our systemd services:
> Job matrix-synapse.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with multi-user.target/start
A workaround which appears to work is to add `DefaultDependencies=no`
to all of our services.
Since the switch from `-v` to `--mount` (in 1fca917ad1),
we've regressed when `matrix_ssl_retrieval_method == 'none'`.
In such a case, we don't create `/matrix/ssl` directories at all
and shouldn't be trying to mount them into the `matrix-nginx-proxy`
container.
Previously, with `-v`, Docker would auto-create them, effectively hiding
our mistake. Now that `--mount` doesn't do such auto-creation magic,
the `matrix-nginx-proxy` container was failing to start.
Fixes https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/issues/734
`-v` magically creates the source destination as a directory,
if it doesn't exist already. We'd like to avoid this magic
and the potential breakage that it might cause.
We'd rather fail while Docker tries to find things to `--mount`
than have it automatically create directories and fail anyway,
while having contaminated the filesystem.
There's a lot more `-v` instances remaining to be fixed later on.
This is just some start.
Things like `matrix_synapse_container_additional_volumes` and
`matrix_nginx_proxy_container_additional_volumes` were not changed to
use `--mount`, as options for each one are passed differently
(`ro` is `ro`, but `rw` doesn't exist and `slave` is `bind-propagation=slave`).
To avoid breaking people's custom volume mounts, we keep it as it is for now.
A deficiency with `--mount` is that it lacks the `z` option (SELinux
ownership changes), and some of our `-v` instances use that. I'm not
sure how supported SELinux is for us right now, but it might be,
and breaking that would not be a good idea.
Depending on the distro, common commands like sleep and chown may either
be located in /bin or /usr/bin.
Systemd added path lookup to ExecStart in v239, allowing only the
command name to be put in unit files and not the full path as
historically required. At least Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is however still on
v237 so we should maintain portability for a while longer.
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`).
`matrix_nginx_proxy_data_path` has always served as a base path,
so we're renaming it to reflect that.
Along with this, we're also introducing a new "data path" variable
(`matrix_nginx_proxy_data_path`), which is really a data path this time.
It's used for storing additional, non-configuration, files related to
matrix-nginx-proxy.
Certain use-cases may require that people mount additional files
into the matrix-nginx-proxy container. Similarly to how we do it
for Synapse, we are introducing a new variable that makes this
possible (`matrix_nginx_proxy_container_additional_volumes`).
This makes the htpasswd file for Synapse Metrics (introduced in #86,
Github Pull Request) to also perform mounting using this new mechanism.
Hopefully, for such an "extension", keeping htpasswd file-creation and
volume definition in the same place (the tasks file) is better.
All other major volumes' mounting mechanism remains the same (explicit
mounting).
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.
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`).
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.
Michael