137 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
137 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
+++
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date = "2023-07-07T18:45:00Z"
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title = "Making Sure The Libera.Chat Bridge Keeps Working"
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[taxonomies]
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author = ["Thib"]
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category = ["Bridges"]
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+++
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Libera Chat recently [announced their decision to opt-out of portalled rooms](https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling)
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from the Libera.Chat bridge instance hosted by the Matrix.org Foundation
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([a decision we regret but respect](https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/)).
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**This means that for the bridge to keep working, all of your portalled rooms
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need to be turned into plumbed rooms before July 31st**. All of this might be a
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bit obscure, so let’s walk together through these concepts and give you the
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tools to make sure the bridge keeps working for you.
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<!-- more -->
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## Am I concerned?
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If your community is primarily on Matrix and your rooms are not bridged to
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Libera.Chat channels, then you’re not concerned!
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If your community is spread across Matrix and Libera Chat, you need to make sure
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your room is “plumbed” into a Libera Chat channel, and not “portalled” to it.
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But what are those, and how to find out?
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## Plumbed and portalled?
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The simplest approach to it is to say that:
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* Portalled rooms are primarily owned by the bridge and “obey” the IRC side.
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Everyone can join a portalled room.
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* Plumbed rooms are primarily owned by an individual, and try to obey the IRC
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side as much as possible. Plumbed rooms require an IRC chanop to approve a
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plumbing request to establish the link between the Matrix room and the IRC
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channel.
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If you created the room yourself and you remember manually plumbing it into IRC,
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then it's a plumbed room. In all other cases, chances are very high that you are
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using a portalled room. There is no simple way for the general public to know
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whether the room is plumbed or portalled because it’s a technicality that
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shouldn’t matter for most people, and the bridge was not designed to work with
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only plumbed rooms.
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Widgets are not part of the Matrix specification, but given the short time you
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have to migrate your channels, they’re the most straightforward way to figure
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out whether your room is portalled or plumbed and do the necessary to keep the
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bridge working.
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In this guide, we’ll be using Element. Open your room, then click on the top
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right `i` to open the right panel. Click on “Add widgets bridges & bots”.
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Click on “IRC Bridge (Libera.Chat)” and see if you have results in the “Linked
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channels” section.
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If you see results in that section, the room is plumbed, and it will keep
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working. If you don’t see any result in that section, the room is portalled and
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the bridge will stop working by July 31st.
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## What to do if my room is portalled
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Unfortunately, portalled rooms cannot be easily turned into plumbed rooms. You
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need to:
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1. Create a brand new Matrix room
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2. Plumb it to the IRC channel it was bridged to
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3. Redirect the users of the portalled room to the new plumbed room.
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The third step can will be done automatically by the bridge in portalled rooms.
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On July 31st, it will make the room read only and list the public rooms which
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are plumbed to the same IRC channel.
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### Create a brand new room
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At first this room is not connected to IRC at all. We recommend you to set the
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room history visibility to “Members only (since they joined)”, which corresponds
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to `m.room.history_visibility = joined` technically. This setting matches IRC’s
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behaviour.
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### Plumb it to IRC
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In Element, make sure you’re in the room you have just created, and click on the
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top right `i` icon to open the right panel. Then at the bottom click on “Add
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widgets, bridges & bots” like you did in the portalled room.
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In the “Bridges” section, click on “IRC Bridge (Libera.chat)” and “Add”. Scroll
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down to “Link a new channel”. You will be asked to fill information so you can
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plumb the room to IRC. You can’t edit the server field, which is correctly set
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to Libera Chat. Enter the channel you want to plumb to, and the nick of a chanop
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of this channel.
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We ask you to please be considerate of Libera Chat chanops and staff, and to
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only send plumb requests to channels:
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* you control;
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* or you have talked to the chanop prior to the plumb request
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The chanop will receive this request on their end:
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If they accept, the room will be plumbed into the IRC channel. Again, please be
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mindful of the remote side of the bridge and don’t send plumbing requests out of
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the blue: IRC chanops will very likely turn them down if they don’t know who is
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sending them or who is controlling the room.
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### A note on aliases
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Portalled rooms used to have room addresses in the form`#myroom:libera.chat`.
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Since the `libera.chat` instance only has Matrix ghosts and no real human users,
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you can’t move the alias from the portalled room to your new plumbed room. This
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is by design.
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We hope to be able to turn portalling back on in the future, when we have more
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resources reserved for the bridge and can make stronger commitments. As such we
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want to keep addresses ending in `:libera.chat` for portalled rooms.
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This is not too much of a problem for your room and users though. Let’s consider
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your portalled room was `#myroom:libera.chat`, and that you have created
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`#myroom:example.com` to plumb it into the same `#myroom` channel on
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Libera.Chat. People who try to join `#myroom:libera.chat` will be greeted with a
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message telling them that the room has been archived, and redirect them to your
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plumbed room.
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