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configuring-playbook-ssl-certificates.md

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Adjusting SSL certificate retrieval (optional, advanced)

By default, this playbook retrieves and auto-renews free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt for the domains it needs (matrix.<your-domain> and possibly element.<your-domain>)

Those certificates are used when configuring the nginx reverse proxy installed by this playbook. They can also be used for configuring your own webserver, in case you're not using the integrated nginx server provided by the playbook.

If you need to retrieve certificates for other domains (e.g. your base domain) or more control over certificate retrieval, read below.

Things discussed in this document:

Using self-signed SSL certificates

For private deployments (not publicly accessible from the internet), you may not be able to use Let's Encrypt certificates.

If self-signed certificates are alright with you, you can ask the playbook to generate such for you with the following configuration:

matrix_ssl_retrieval_method: self-signed

If you get a Cannot reach homeserver error in Element, you will have to visit https://matrix.<your-domain> in your browser and agree to the certificate exception before you can login.

Using your own SSL certificates

If you'd like to manage SSL certificates by yourself and have the playbook use your certificate files, you can use the following configuration:

matrix_ssl_retrieval_method: manually-managed

With such a configuration, the playbook would expect you to drop the SSL certificate files in the directory specified by matrix_ssl_config_dir_path (/matrix/ssl/config by default) obeying the following hierarchy:

  • <matrix_ssl_config_dir_path>/live/<domain>/fullchain.pem
  • <matrix_ssl_config_dir_path>/live/<domain>/privkey.pem
  • <matrix_ssl_config_dir_path>/live/<domain>/chain.pem

where <domain> refers to the domains that you need (usually matrix.<your-domain> and element.<your-domain>).

Not bothering with SSL certificates

If you're using an external web server which is not nginx, or you would otherwise want to manage its certificates without this playbook getting in the way, you can completely disable SSL certificate management with the following configuration:

matrix_ssl_retrieval_method: none

With such a configuration, no certificates will be retrieved at all. You're free to manage them however you want.

Obtaining SSL certificates for additional domains

The playbook tries to be smart about the certificates it will obtain for you.

By default, it obtains certificates for:

  • matrix.<your-domain> (matrix_server_fqn_matrix)
  • possibly for element.<your-domain>, unless you have disabled the Element client component using matrix_client_element_enabled: false
  • possibly for riot.<your-domain>, if you have explicitly enabled Riot to Element redirection (for background compatibility) using matrix_nginx_proxy_proxy_riot_compat_redirect_enabled: true
  • possibly for dimension.<your-domain>, if you have explicitly set up Dimension.
  • possibly for jitsi.<your-domain>, if you have explicitly set up Jitsi.
  • possibly for your base domain (<your-domain>), if you have explicitly configured Serving the base domain

If you are hosting other domains on the Matrix machine, you can make the playbook obtain and renew certificates for those other domains too. To do that, simply define your own custom configuration like this:

# In this example, we retrieve 2 extra certificates,
# one for the base domain (in the `matrix_domain` variable) and one for a hardcoded domain.
# Adding any other additional domains (hosted on the same machine) is possible.
matrix_ssl_additional_domains_to_obtain_certificates_for:
  - '{{ matrix_domain }}'
  - 'another.domain.example.com'

After redefining matrix_ssl_domains_to_obtain_certificates_for, to actually obtain certificates you should:

  • make sure the web server occupying port 80 is stopped. If you are using matrix-nginx-proxy server (which is the default for this playbook), you need to stop it temporarily by running systemctl stop matrix-nginx-proxy on the server.

  • re-run the SSL part of the playbook and restart all services: ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-ssl,start

The certificate files would be made available in /matrix/ssl/config/live/<your-other-domain>/....

For automated certificate renewal to work, each port 80 vhost for each domain you are obtaining certificates for needs to forward requests for /.well-known/acme-challenge to the certbot container we use for renewal.

See how this is configured for the matrix. subdomain in /matrix/nginx-proxy/conf.d/matrix-synapse.conf Don't be alarmed if the above configuration file says port 8080, instead of port 80. It's due to port mapping due to our use of containers.