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

Setting up Hydrogen (optional)

The playbook can install and configure the Hydrogen Matrix web client for you.

Hydrogen is a lightweight web client that supports mobile and legacy web browsers. It can be installed alongside or instead of Element Web.

Adjusting DNS records

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

When setting, replace example.com with your own.

Adjusting the playbook configuration

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

matrix_client_hydrogen_enabled: true

Adjusting the Hydrogen URL (optional)

By tweaking the matrix_client_hydrogen_hostname and matrix_client_hydrogen_path_prefix variables, you can easily make the service available at a different hostname and/or path than the default one.

Example additional configuration for your vars.yml file:

# Switch to the domain used for Matrix services (`matrix.example.com`),
# so we won't need to add additional DNS records for Hydrogen.
matrix_client_hydrogen_hostname: "{{ matrix_server_fqn_matrix }}"

# Expose under the /hydrogen subpath
matrix_client_hydrogen_path_prefix: /hydrogen

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

If you've decided to reuse the matrix. domain, you won't need to do any extra DNS configuration.

Extending the configuration

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

Take a look at:

• roles/custom/matrix-client-hydrogen/defaults/main.yml for some variables that you can customize via your vars.yml file
• roles/custom/matrix-client-hydrogen/templates/config.json.j2 for the client's default configuration. You can override settings (even those that don't have dedicated playbook variables) using the matrix_client_hydrogen_configuration_extension_json variable

Installing

After configuring the playbook and potentially 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.

Troubleshooting

As with all other services, you can find the logs in systemd-journald by logging in to the server with SSH and running journalctl -fu matrix-client-hydrogen.