matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/docs/configuring-playbook-bridge-mautrix-telegram.md

Setting up Mautrix Telegram bridging (optional)

The playbook can install and configure mautrix-telegram for you.

See the project's documentation to learn what it does and why it might be useful to you.

Prerequisites

Obtain a Telegram API key

To use the bridge, you'd need to obtain an API key from https://my.telegram.org/apps.

Enable Appservice Double Puppet or Shared Secret Auth (optional)

If you want to set up Double Puppeting (hint: you most likely do) for this bridge automatically, you need to have enabled Appservice Double Puppet or Shared Secret Auth service for this playbook.

For details about configuring Double Puppeting for this bridge, see the section below: Set up Double Puppeting

Adjusting the playbook configuration

To enable the bridge, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file. Make sure to replace YOUR_TELEGRAM_APP_ID and YOUR_TELEGRAM_API_HASH.

matrix_mautrix_telegram_enabled: true
matrix_mautrix_telegram_api_id: YOUR_TELEGRAM_APP_ID
matrix_mautrix_telegram_api_hash: YOUR_TELEGRAM_API_HASH

Installing

After configuring the playbook, run it with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,ensure-matrix-users-created,start

Notes:

• The ensure-matrix-users-created playbook tag makes the playbook automatically create the bot's user account.

• The shortcut commands with the just program are also available: just install-all or just setup-all

  just install-all is useful for maintaining your setup quickly (2x-5x faster than just setup-all) when its components remain unchanged. If you adjust your vars.yml to remove other components, you'd need to run just setup-all, or these components will still remain installed.

Usage

To use the bridge, you need to start a chat with @telegrambot:example.com (where example.com is your base domain, not the matrix. domain).

If you want to use the relay-bot feature (relay bot documentation), which allows anonymous user to chat with telegram users, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_mautrix_telegram_bot_token: YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN
matrix_mautrix_telegram_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  bridge:
    permissions:
      '*': relaybot  

You might also want to give permissions to administrate the bot:

matrix_mautrix_telegram_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  bridge:
    permissions:
      '@alice:{{ matrix_domain }}': admin  

More details about permissions in this example: https://github.com/mautrix/telegram/blob/master/mautrix_telegram/example-config.yaml#L410

If you like to exclude all groups from syncing and use the Telgeram-Bridge only for direct chats, you can add the following additional playbook configuration:

matrix_mautrix_telegram_filter_mode: whitelist

💡 Set up Double Puppeting

After successfully enabling bridging, you may wish to set up Double Puppeting (hint: you most likely do).

To set it up, you have 2 ways of going about it.

Method 1: automatically, by enabling Appservice Double Puppet or Shared Secret Auth

The bridge automatically performs Double Puppeting if Appservice Double Puppet or Shared Secret Auth service is configured and enabled on the server for this playbook.

Enabling Appservice Double Puppet is the recommended way of setting up Double Puppeting, as it's easier to accomplish, works for all your users automatically, and has less of a chance of breaking in the future.

Enabling double puppeting by enabling the Shared Secret Auth service works at the time of writing, but is deprecated and will stop working in the future.

Method 2: manually, by asking each user to provide a working access token

Note: This method for enabling Double Puppeting can be configured only after you've already set up bridging.

When using this method, each user that wishes to enable Double Puppeting needs to follow the following steps:

• retrieve a Matrix access token for yourself. Refer to the documentation on how to obtain one.

• send login-matrix to the bot and follow instructions about how to send the access token to it

• make sure you don't log out the Mautrix-Telegram device some time in the future, as that would break the Double Puppeting feature