matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/docs/configuring-playbook-client-cinny.md

Setting up Cinny (optional)

This playbook can install the Cinny Matrix web client for you.

Cinny is a web client focusing primarily on simple, elegant and secure interface. It can be installed alongside or instead of Element Web.

💡 Note: the latest version of Cinny is also available on the web, hosted by 3rd parties. If you trust giving your credentials to the following 3rd party Single Page Applications, you can consider using it from there and avoiding the (small) overhead of self-hosting:

• app.cinny.in, hosted by the Cinny developers

Adjusting DNS records

By default, this playbook installs Cinny on the cinny. subdomain (cinny.example.com) and requires you to create a CNAME record for cinny, which targets matrix.example.com.

When setting, replace example.com with your own.

Adjusting the playbook configuration

To enable Cinny, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_client_cinny_enabled: true

Adjusting the Cinny URL (optional)

By tweaking the matrix_client_cinny_hostname variable, you can easily make the service available at a different hostname than the default one.

Example additional configuration for your vars.yml file:

# Switch to a different domain (`app.example.com`) than the default one (`cinny.example.com`)
matrix_client_cinny_hostname: "app.{{ matrix_domain }}"

# Expose under the /cinny subpath
# matrix_client_cinny_path_prefix: /cinny

After changing the domain, you may need to adjust your DNS records to point the Cinny domain to the Matrix server.

Note: while there is a matrix_client_cinny_path_prefix variable for changing the path where Cinny is served, overriding it is not possible, because Cinny requires an application rebuild (with a tweaked build config) to be functional under a custom path. You'd need to serve Cinny at a dedicated subdomain.

Installing

After configuring the playbook and adjusting your DNS records, run the playbook with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,start

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. Note these shortcuts run the ensure-matrix-users-created tag too.