matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/docs/configuring-playbook-bot-draupnir.md

Setting up Draupnir (optional)

The playbook can install and configure the Draupnir moderation bot for you.

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

This documentation page is about installing Draupnir in bot mode. As an alternative, you can run a multi-instance Draupnir deployment by installing Draupnir in appservice mode (called Draupnir-for-all) instead.

If your migrating from Mjolnir, skip to this section.

Prerequisites

Create a management room

Using your own account, create a new invite only room that you will use to manage the bot. This is the room where you will see the status of the bot and where you will send commands to the bot, such as the command to ban a user from another room.

⚠️ Warning: anyone in this room can control the bot so it is important that you only invite trusted users to this room.

It is possible to make the management room encrypted (E2EE). If doing so, then you need to enable the native E2EE support (see below).

Once you have created the room you need to copy the room ID so you can specify it on your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file. In Element Web you can check the ID by going to the room's settings and clicking "Advanced". The room ID will look something like !qporfwt:example.com.

End-to-End Encryption support

Decide whether you want to support having an encrypted management room or not. Draupnir can still protect encrypted rooms without encryption support enabled.

Refer to Draupnir's documentation for more details about why you might want to care about encryption support for protected rooms.

Disable Pantalaimon for Draupnir (since v2.0.0; optional)

It is known that running Draupnir along with Pantalaimon breaks all workflows that involve answering prompts with reactions.

If you are updating Draupnir from v1.x.x and have enabled Pantalaimon for it, you can disable Pantalaimon in favor of the native E2EE support. To disable Pantalaimon, remove the configuration matrix_bot_draupnir_pantalaimon_use: true from your vars.yml file.

Note: because the management room is still encrypted, disabling it without enabling the native E2EE support will break the management room.

Native E2EE support

To enable the native E2EE support, you need to obtain an access token for Draupnir and set it on your vars.yml file.

Note that native E2EE requires a clean access token that has not touched E2EE so curl is recommended as a method to obtain it. The access token obtained via Element Web does not work with it. Refer to the documentation on how to obtain an access token via curl.

To enable the native E2EE support, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file. Make sure to replace CLEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE with the access token you obtained just now.

# Enables the native E2EE support
matrix_bot_draupnir_enable_experimental_rust_crypto: true

# Access token which the bot will use for logging in.
# Comment out `matrix_bot_draupnir_login_native` when using this option.
matrix_bot_draupnir_access_token: "CLEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE"

Adjusting the playbook configuration

To enable the bot, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file. Make sure to replace MANAGEMENT_ROOM_ID_HERE with the one of the room which you have created earlier.

# Enable Draupnir
matrix_bot_draupnir_enabled: true

# Uncomment and adjust this part if you'd like to use a username different than the default
# matrix_bot_draupnir_login: bot.draupnir

# Generate a strong password for the bot. You can create one with a command like `pwgen -s 64 1`.
# If creating the user on your own and using `matrix_bot_draupnir_access_token` to login you can comment out this line.
matrix_bot_draupnir_password: PASSWORD_FOR_THE_BOT

# Comment out if using `matrix_bot_draupnir_enable_experimental_rust_crypto: true` or `matrix_bot_draupnir_access_token` to login.
matrix_bot_draupnir_login_native: true

matrix_bot_draupnir_management_room: "MANAGEMENT_ROOM_ID_HERE"

Before proceeding to the next step, run the playbook with the following command to make sure that the bot user has been created.

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

Make sure the account is free from rate limiting (optional, recommended)

If your homeserver's implementation is Synapse, you will need to prevent it from rate limiting the bot's account. This is a highly recommended step. If you do not configure it, Draupnir performance will be degraded.

This can be done using Synapse's Admin APIs. They can be accessed both externally and internally.

Note: access to the APIs is restricted with a valid access token, so exposing them publicly should not be a real security concern. Still, doing so is not recommended for additional security. See official Synapse reverse-proxying recommendations.

The APIs can also be accessed via Synapse Admin, a web UI tool you can use to administrate users, rooms, media, etc. on your Matrix server. The playbook can install and configure Synapse Admin for you. For details about it, see this page.

Add the configuration

To expose the APIs publicly, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

matrix_synapse_container_labels_public_client_synapse_admin_api_enabled: true

Obtain an access token for admin account

Manual access to Synapse's Admin APIs requires an access token for a homeserver admin account. Refer to the documentation on how to obtain an access token.

⚠️ Warning: Access tokens are sensitive information. Do not include them in any bug reports, messages, or logs. Do not share the access token with anyone.

Run the curl command

To disable rate limiting, run the following command on systems that ship curl (note that it does not work on outdated Windows 10). Even if the APIs are not exposed to the internet, you should still be able to run the command on the homeserver locally. Before running it, make sure to replace @bot.draupnir:example.com with the MXID of your Draupnir:

curl --header "Authorization: Bearer <access_token>" -X POST https://matrix.example.com/_synapse/admin/v1/users/@bot.draupnir:example.com/override_ratelimit

Abuse Reports

Draupnir can receive reports in the management room.

The bot can intercept the report API endpoint of the client-server API, which requires integration with the reverse proxy in front of the homeserver. If you are using Traefik, this playbook can set this up for you:

matrix_bot_draupnir_abuse_reporting_enabled: true

Extending the configuration

There are some additional things you may wish to configure about the bot.

Take a look at:

• roles/custom/matrix-bot-draupnir/defaults/main.yml for some variables that you can customize via your vars.yml file. You can override settings (even those that don't have dedicated playbook variables) using the matrix_bot_draupnir_configuration_extension_yaml variable

For example, to change Draupnir's acceptInvitesFromSpace option to !qporfwt:example.com, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file:

matrix_bot_draupnir_configuration_extension_yaml: |
  # Your custom YAML configuration goes here.
  # This configuration extends the default starting configuration (`matrix_bot_draupnir_configuration_yaml`).
  #
  # You can override individual variables from the default configuration, or introduce new ones.
  #
  # If you need something more special, you can take full control by
  # completely redefining `matrix_bot_draupnir_configuration_yaml`.
  acceptInvitesFromSpace: "!qporfwt:example.com"  

Migrating from Mjolnir (Only required if migrating)

Replace your matrix_bot_mjolnir config with matrix_bot_draupnir config. Also disable Mjolnir if you're doing migration.

Note that Draupnir supports E2EE natively, so you can enable it instead of Pantalaimon. It is recommended to consult the instruction here.

That is all you need to do due to that Draupnir can complete migration on its own.

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 Draupnir, you need to invite the bot (@bot.draupnir:example.com) to its management room which you have created earlier.

You can refer to the upstream documentation for additional ways to use and configure Draupnir and for a more detailed usage guide.

Below is a non-exhaustive quick-start guide for the impatient.

Making Draupnir join and protect a room

Draupnir can be told to self-join public rooms, but it's better to follow this flow which works well for all kinds of rooms:

1. Invite the bot to the room manually (inviting Draupnir to rooms). Before joining, the bot may ask for confirmation in the Management Room

2. Give the bot permissions to do its job

3. Tell it to protect the room (using the rooms command) by sending the following command to the Management Room: !draupnir rooms add !qporfwt:example.com

To have Draupnir provide useful room protection, you need do to a bit more work (at least the first time around). You may wish to Subscribe to a public policy list, Create your own own policy and rules and Enabling built-in protections.

Giving Draupnir permissions to do its job

For Draupnir to do its job, you need to give it permissions in rooms it's protecting. This involves giving it an Administrator power level.

We recommend setting this power level as soon as the bot joins your room (and before you create new rules), so that it can apply rules as soon as they are available. If the bot is under-privileged, it may fail to apply protections and may not retry for a while (or until your restart it).

Subscribing to a public policy list

We recommend subscribing to a public policy list using the watch command.

Polcy lists are maintained in Matrix rooms. A popular policy list is maintained in the public #community-moderation-effort-bl:neko.dev room.

You can tell Draupnir to subscribe to it by sending the following command to the Management Room: !draupnir watch #community-moderation-effort-bl:neko.dev

Creating your own policy lists and rules

We also recommend creating your own policy lists with the list create command.

You can do so by sending the following command to the Management Room: !draupnir list create my-bans my-bans-bl. This will create a policy list having a name (shortcode) of my-bans and stored in a public #my-bans-bl:example.com room on your server. As soon as you run this command, the bot will invite you to the policy list room.

A policy list does nothing by itself, so the next step is adding some rules to your policy list. Policies target a so-called entity (one of: user, room or server). These entities are mentioned on the policy lists documentation page and in the Matrix Spec here.

The simplest and most useful entity to target is user. Below are a few examples using the ban command and targeting users.

To create rules, you run commands in the Management Room (not in the policy list room).

• (ban a single user on a given homeserver): !draupnir ban @charles:example.com my-bans Rude to others
• (ban all users on a given homeserver by using a wildcard): !draupnir ban @*:example.org my-bans Spam server - all users are fake

As a result of running these commands, you may observe:

• Draupnir creating m.policy.rule.user state events in the #my-bans-bl:example.com room on your server
• applying these rules against all rooms that Draupnir is an Administrator in

You can undo bans with the unban command.

Enabling built-in protections

You can also turn on various built-in protections like JoinWaveShortCircuit ("If X amount of users join in Y time, set the room to invite-only").

To see which protections are available and which are enabled, send a !draupnir protections command to the Management Room.

To see the configuration options for a given protection, send a !draupnir protections show PROTECTION_NAME (e.g. !draupnir protections show JoinWaveShortCircuit).

To set a specific option for a given protection, send a command like this: !draupnir config set PROTECTION_NAME.OPTION VALUE (e.g. !draupnir config set JoinWaveShortCircuit.timescaleMinutes 30).

To enable a given protection, send a command like this: !draupnir enable PROTECTION_NAME (e.g. !draupnir enable JoinWaveShortCircuit).

To disable a given protection, send a command like this: !draupnir disable PROTECTION_NAME (e.g. !draupnir disable JoinWaveShortCircuit).