Arch Linux User Repository

It seems that mautrix-whatsapp.tmpfiles does not grant sufficient read permission for /etc/mautrix-whatsapp for anyone other than root. Since mautrix-whatsapp is run by the homonymous user, it fails for me with Error updating config: failed to read config: open /etc/mautrix-whatsapp/mautrix-whatsapp.yaml: permission denied.

In fact it seems to even need write access to /etc/mautrix-whatsapp, because even with read access it fails with Error updating config: failed to create temp file for writing config: open /etc/mautrix-whatsapp/mautrix-config-3128392766.yaml: permission denied.

And it seems I also need to add ReadWritePaths=/etc/mautrix-whatsapp to mautrix-whatsapp.service.

"WhatsApp appears to have blocked old web app versions from connecting to the servers, which includes v0.2.3 of the bridge. If you haven't updated to v0.2.4 yet, you'll probably get <failure reason="405"/> errors until you update. The errors are otherwise harmless and the bridge should keep working normally after updating." -tulir

On my bridge I first got the error "You're logged in as ### but you don't have a WhatsApp connection.", then upon delete-session and trying to login "Failed to log in: unexpected connection event from server"

/var/lib/mautrix-whatsapp is now used as home and working directory for mautrix-whatsapp and all files except the log are now stored there.

Also the a modified version of the service file provided by https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/whatsapp/setup/systemd.html is used and the service will restart 30s after systemd detects a failure

I have had the service crash due to a bug I am still trying to hunt down. The problem is that in Matrix there is no indication that this happened, at least no automatic one, so the user will never know that he is missing messages and not communicating with anyone on WhatsApp.

As a temporary fix and a general idea going forward, what is your opinion to making the service file restart the service upon crash (Restart=on-failure)?

For the database, could have the mautrix-whatsapp user have a home directory (e.g. /var/lib/mautrix-whatsapp) which I've seen for some other bridges. That would then be the working directory for the service.

As for permissions, you are right, that is a better idea and also seems to be common among other bridges now that I've got them set up. That works for me, and unless bridges decide to formalize a shared registration directory, is probably the cleanest.

i will lock into moving the database to the directory when i have time.

regarding the registration file. I have normaly handled it by adding the synapse user to the mautrix-whatsapp group. which is in my opinion the safest option as everyone that has access to the registration file has (as far as i know) a lot of unresticted access to the homeserver. Also it is not realy possible to put the registration.yaml file into a synapse owned directory as other homeservers are starting to add appservice support and so the package can't asume that you have synapse installed. Another option would be to reach a consensus with all the other packages that add appservices for a matrix homeserver for a single canonical directory for registration files.

I think it would be handy to have a directory for the database (and any other files needing to be written by the bridge). So I created one in /var/lib/ owned by mautrix-whatsapp and set that as the working director and readwrite permissions in the service. Maybe also include some of the service settings from the docs? https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/whatsapp/setup/systemd.html

Also (true with I think all the bridges I've tried) there are permissions needed for synapse to read the created registration.yaml file (if made in the /etc/mautrix-whatsapp director). Not sure if normally this is put in a synapse directory or just owned by synapse or made world readable?