Export RabbitMQ Docker image with vhost and queues - docker

Question

I have a rabbitMQ docker container that I started using the following command:
docker run -d --name myrabbit1 -p 15672:15672 rabbitmq:3-management
I then loggin to the management plugin and create users, vhosts, queues, etc.
I want to save all those settings so they can be loaded up again. To do that I tried committing to a new image:
docker commit myrabbit1 vbrabbit:withVhostAndQueues
I then start up my new container (after stopping the old one):
docker run -d --name vbrabbit2 -p 15672:15672 -p 5672:5672 vbrabbit:withVhostAndQueues
I expect that all the queues, vhosts, etc would be saved, but they are not.
What am I missing?
Result from docker ps -a:

Answer 1

I want to save all those settings so they can be loaded up again
are you needing to create a copy of the container, with the same settings?
or are you just looking to docker stop myrabbit1 and then later docker start myrabbit to run the same container, again?

Answer 2

TL;DR
The RabbitMQ instance within the container is looking for data in a different place. The default configuration changes the data storage/load location per container creation. Thus the OPs data existed in the created "final" image but rabbitmq wasn't loading it.
To fix statically set RABBITMQ_NODENAME which likewise might requiring adding another line to /etc/hosts for RabbitMQ to affirm the node is active.
Details
This happened to me with docker rabbit:3.8.12-management
This is caused by RabbitMQ's default configuration impacting how it does data storage. By default RabbitMQ starts a node on UNIX system with a name of rabbit#$HOSTNAME (see RABBITMQ_NODENAME on config docs). In Docker the $HOSTNAME changes per container run it defaults to the container id (e.g. something like dd84759287560).
In #jhilden's case is when the vbrabbit:withVhostAndQueues image is booted as a new container the RABBITMQ_NODENAME becomes a different value then what was used to create and store the original vhosts, user, queues, etc. And as RabbitMQ stores data inside a directory named after the RABBITMQ_NODENAME the existing data isn't loaded on boot of vbrabbit:withVhostAndQueues. As when the $HOSTNAME changes the RABBITMQ_NODENAME changes. Thus the booting RabbitMQ instance cannot find any existing data. (e.g. the existing data is there in the image but for a different RABBITMQ_NODENAME and isn't loaded).
Note: I've only looked into solving this for a local development single instance cluster. If you're using RabbitMQ docker for a production deployment you'd probably need to look into customized hostnames
To fix this issue we set a static RABBITMQ_NODENAME for the container.
In docker-compose v3 file we updated from:
# Before fix
rabbitmq:
image: "rabbitmq:$RABBITMQ_VERSION"
container_name: rabbitmq
ports:
- "5672:5672"
- "15672:15672"
- "61613:61613"
volumes:
- "./etc/rabbit-plugins:/etc/rabbitmq/enabled_plugins"
- type: volume
source: rabbitmq-data
target: /var/lib/rabbitmq
Into after fix:
rabbitmq:
image: "rabbitmq:$RABBITMQ_VERSION"
container_name: rabbitmq
# Why do we set NODENAME and extra_hosts?
#
# It codifies that we're using the same RabbitMQ instance between container rebuilds.
# If NODENAME is not set it defaults to "rabbit#$HOST" and because $HOST is dynamically
# created in docker it changes per container deployment. Why is a changing host an issue?
# Well because under the hood Rabbit stores data on a per node basis. Thus without the
# static RABBITMQ_NODENAME the directory the data is stored within changes per restart.
# Going from "rabbit#7745942c559e" to "rabbit#036834720485" the next. Okay, but why do we
# need extra_hosts? We'll Rabbit wants to resolve itself to affirm it's management UI is
# functioning post deployment and does that with an HTTP call. Thus to resolve the static
# host from RABBITMQ_NODENAME we need to add it to the containers /etc/hosts file.
environment:
RABBITMQ_NODENAME: "rabbit#staticrabbit"
extra_hosts:
- "staticrabbit:127.0.0.1"
ports:
- "5672:5672"
- "15672:15672"
- "61613:61613"
volumes:
- "./etc/rabbit-plugins:/etc/rabbitmq/enabled_plugins"
- type: volume
source: rabbitmq-data
target: /var/lib/rabbitmq