XSF Discussion - 2022-01-20

Possibly silly idea - a collection of ansible/TF for spinning up all the different XMPP servers plus a web client on AWS free tier (or similar), so given some preexisting DNS name, people could run up a server instantly. Does such a thing exist already?

Snikket

Ah, good point. But I was thinking of this for all the servers. So, if people want to try out ejabberd, or Openfire, or whatever they can. And mostly, I think, as a demonstration - I keep thinking that Matrix has only the one server (well, two - there's FinChat too), whereas one of our strengths is that we have many.

I was contemplating something very similar, but with the objective to facilitate integration testing.

dwd: Enjoy dealing with the multitude of reverse proxies everyone apparently already have on that server.

I was just planning to do the same for local testing too guus.der.kinderen ...

but with the added complexity of fake dns servers etc

Openfire has a "demoboot" option that starts a fully provisioned service, which is very useful for this kind of thing

If you go to Matrix.org, they'll tell you to install Synapse (of course). We can't do the same, but we could link to or host "quickstarts" for all the servers. So instead of having to explain SRV records, Terraform can just do it. Might not be perfect for production, but gets people live and trying things out.

And yes, testing.

Wrapping that in a docker image would be almost trivial, and very useful. Which is why we already did that for CI

who are you targetting though ?

Right, so add a bit of TF magic to do the hosting and DNS.

if it's end-users, you certainly don't want them trying to decide which server and which client(s), you just want to say "use snikket"

People wanting to give it a test run

Or show them https://xmpp.org/chat

Want to play with the server

moparisthebest, Agreed, but for admins and people who *want* to run their own server, having a baseline for all the servers would be good.

I need to go now, but I'm very much in favour.

Yes dwd, Just Do It™

0. Welcome

+AOB

Hi

Hi dear Directors, Members and everyone else!

,

MattJ? arc?

>50%

And having only 4 Directors makes that 3.

dwd: but we do have a vacancy :D

emus: I did not see any e-mail. Where did you address it to?

Sorry, something came up shortly before the meeting and I only just got to my laptop :/

No worries, but curious: you don't use XMPP on your mobile phone?

I do, but my phone spends most of its time in "flight mode" :)

> Possibly silly idea - a collection of ansible/TF for spinning up all the different XMPP servers plus a web client on AWS free tier (or similar), so given some preexisting DNS name, people could run up a server instantly. Does such a thing exist already? dwd: i was also thinking of Spending some time on providing a cloud init Script for snikket so people can just copy paste that into somewhere, e.g. when they spin up a VPS at Hetzner. But so far haven't found the time. But my Thesis is almost scheduled so in summer I don't have that time killer and some room for such things... But most people probabl would need to register a domain, too.... So additional complexity. Don't know if there is any cloud provider that would let you script a xmpp server setup e2e... That would be fantastic, but i wonder if people really care that much 🤔

sebastian, not silly. it actually reminds me about the (now defunct) https://github.com/openspace42/aenigma project imho, registering a domain is a necessary requirement

ah, didn't know aenigma. Sad its discontiued... ✏

snikket already simplifies a lot. If you can register a VPS, you probably can manage to spin up a docker-compose.yml and have a domian registered. But a "click here to buy a domain and have a fully scripted installation" would be cool

> so I think that keeping 353 for call initiation only matches its semantics and is also a good means to implement group calls. That said, I'm okay with decoupling it from jingle and allowing to plug in different mechanisms. Ge0rG, larma: sure I'm fine with that

dwd, this is basically what you describe, for Snikket: https://github.com/snikket-im/snikket-terraform-aws

It may serve as a useful template for adapting to other servers too, perhaps

It doesn't use ansible, mind... just a shell script

And now you have to learn terraform instead of the-xmpp-server

Right :)

terraform is simpler than the average non-snikket xmpp server setup though

Maybe. Not entirely sure that's true if you're totally unfamiliar with it.

maybe, indeed

I guess if it's a ready made project and targeting a specific cloud provider, "just drop your API keys here and run 'terraform apply'" may be fairly simple indeed

Especially now they hopefully stopped breaking everything with every release

should make a terraform template for sovereign cloud stack…

sebastian, i've started a new wiki page to track some of the simplified or one-touch XMPP deployment options .. https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/XMPP_Simplified_Deployments

junaid: snikket missing 😁

?

yea, i was trying to make sure i dont forgot to put the others... ofc i end up forgetting it

done.

junaid, added a couple more and updated descriptions

I've got Terraform templates for prosody/postgres on digital ocean and possibly vultr or linode somewhere if someone wants them

ralphm I have to read to history from to day but I just forwarded the email to board@xmpp.org ✏

ralphm, MattJ, arc, jcbrand. would be happy if you guys could comment on my email before the next board meeting. I forwarded it to board@

Hmm, wonder if we filter that out of it's moderated

emus, to info@ right? I'm pretty sure I received something from you the other day

I send it to your private mails first

I can send it to info if you want

If it's the same email, no need

board@

was it

but actually you all shoulf have it in your personal inboxes