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.
Some people requested that `--tags=start` not set up service autostart.
One can now do `--tags=start --extra-vars="matrix_services_autostart_enabled=false"`
to just start services ones and not set up autostarting.
Fixes#129 (Github Issue).
Unfortunately, we rely on `service_facts`, which is only available
in Ansible >= 2.5.
There's little reason to stick to an old version such as Ansible 2.4:
- some time has passed since we've raised version requirements - it's
time to move into the future (a little bit)
- we've recently (in 82b4640072) improved the way one can run
Ansible in a Docker container
From now on, Ansible >= 2.5 is required.
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.
Slavi Pantaleev
Benjamin Fichtner
Christian Wolf
kingoftheconnors