MQ in Docker, removing the tie to the QMGR Process — Docker Staying Alive

So recently Aiden Gallagher (Another IBM Intergration SME) and I were trying to do API Connect in BM integration with an MQ Docker instance also running in BM, with SSL.

I am by no means an MQ expert and we found that when ever we restarted the MQ QMGR it would kill the docker container. This was because the container was written in such a way that when the QMGR process ends the container shuts down.

Now there are a number of good reasons for this however it is infuritating at times!

So I forked the IBM MQ Docker and made some minor changes. You can see my fork here.

ChrisPhillips-cminion/mq-docker

The key things I changed.

1. I added a keep alive function. This is runs mq.sh that monitors the QM t then runs a while 1 loop to ensure the process does not end.

#!/bin/bash
mq.sh
while true; do
  echo "sleeping for 100000s"
  sleep 100000
done

2. I modified mq-monitor-qmgr.sh to remove the checks to wait for the process to end. I.e. I commented line 38 onwards out.

3. I modified the DockerFile to run keepalive.sh not mq.sh i.e. i changed the last line to the following

ENTRYPOINT ["keepalive.sh"]

4. (Optional) I created a run.sh that would clean up, build, start and tail the logs of a container.

docker rm -f $(docker ps -qa)
docker build -t cminion/mq .
docker run \
  --env LICENSE=accept \
  --env MQ_QMGR_NAME=QM1 \
  --publish 1414:1414 \
  --publish 9443:9443 \
  --detach \
  --name mq cminion/mq
docker logs -f mq

Thats it! Now just to work out how to enable SSL!