I first wrote about MQTT and IoT back in 2012, when I developed a simple C
based library to publish and subscribe Quality of Service (QoS) level 0 MQTT messages.
Subsequently, MQTT has grown to be one of the most widely used IoT connectivity protocols with direct support from service such as AWS. Back in 2010, the first open-source MQTT Broker was Mosquitto. Mosquitto is now part of the Eclipse Foundation, and an iot.eclipse.org project, sponsored by cedalo.com.
Another area that has grown during the interim period is the use of container technology, such as Docker, for both testing and deployment. We have, also, extensively covered Docker in previous blog posts.
For another internal dogfood project, I wanted to run a local MQTT Broker rather than a web-based broker, such as https://mqtt.eclipse.org/. Mosquitto can be installed natively on Windows, Mac and Linux. Still, one of the significant benefits of Docker is not polluting your working machine with lots of different tools.
Running Mosquitto in a Docker container is, therefore, a perfect test environment. Rather than, as in the previous Docker blog articles, build our own Docker image containing Mosquitto, we can use the official Dockerhub image.
eclipse-mosquitto Docker image
Pull the latest image
I’m assuming you have Docker installed and configured for your local working environment.
First, pull the latest image from Dockerhub:
% docker pull eclipse-mosquitto
Note of caution: the instructions on the Dockerhub site are incorrect!
Run the docker image
Run the basic Docker image with default settings:
% docker run -it --name mosquitto -p 1883:1883 eclipse-mosquitto
1582194844: mosquitto version 1.6.8 starting
1582194844: Config loaded from /mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf.
1582194844: Opening ipv4 listen socket on port 1883.
1582194844: Opening ipv6 listen socket on port 1883.
The -p 1883:1883
argument maps the docker container’s default MQTT socket 1883
the localhost (127.0.0.1
) port 1883
. Alternatively, we could map that onto another localhost port if it clashed with a locally running MQTT broker, e.g. -p 11883:1883
.
Using the --name
directive also allows the container to be stopped and restarted, using:
% docker stop mosquitto
and
% docker start mosquitto
Testing the eclipse-mosquitto Docker container
To test the setup of the running Mosquitto container, I used my original software, still available on github. To build this, you’ll need a C compiler (ideally gcc or clang) and CMake.
Alternatively, any MQTT client should work for test purposes.
Subscribe
Next, we must subscribe to a topic. In a command window invoke the subscribe client to a topic, the default for our project being hello\world
on port 127.0.0.1:1883
, e.g.
% ./mqttsub
MQTT SUB Test Code
port:1883
Connected to MQTT Server at 127.0.0.1:1883
Subscribed to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS 0
Publish
To test publishing, open another command window and invoke the publisher-client. The publisher-client, by default, publishes 10 messages to the topic hello\world
and then closes the connection, e.g.
% ./mqttpub
MQTT PUB Test Code
port:1883
Connected to MQTT Server at 127.0.0.1:1883
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 1 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 2 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 3 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 4 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 5 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 6 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 7 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 8 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 9 messages
Published to MQTT Service hello/world with QoS0
Sent 10 messages
Subscribe output
On returning to the subscriber window, we will see the received message displayed.
Message number 1
Message number 2
Message number 3
Message number 4
Message number 5
Message number 6
Message number 7
Message number 8
Message number 9
Message number 10
Mosquitto window output
Returning the window where the docker image was invoked, various log messages are shown:
1582194844: mosquitto version 1.6.8 starting
1582194844: Config loaded from /mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf.
1582194844: Opening ipv4 listen socket on port 1883.
1582194844: Opening ipv6 listen socket on port 1883.
1582205221: New connection from 172.17.0.1 on port 1883.
1582205221: New client connected from 172.17.0.1 as default_sub (p1, c1, k30).
1582205225: New connection from 172.17.0.1 on port 1883.
1582205225: New client connected from 172.17.0.1 as default_pub (p1, c1, k30).
1582205235: Client default_pub disconnected.
Setting up persistent files
Mosquitto can be configured, for example, to change logging, password, listener-ports, etc. This is achieved using mosquitto.conf
file.
To set up mosquitto.conf
, first create a local working directory with a three sub-directories of config, data and log, e.g.
% cd
% mkdir docker-mosquitto
% cd docker-mosquitto
% mkdir mosquitto
% mkdir mosquitto/config/
% mkdir mosquitto/data/
% mkdir mosquitto/log/
Create a config file
Next, create a test file called mosquitto.conf
in the newly created subdirectory mosquitto/conf/
:
% touch mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf
Edit the config file
Using your favourite editor (okay vi
isn’t my favourite, but it’s convenient):
% vi mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf
And add the as a minimum set of conf directives.
# following two lines required for > v2.0
allow_anonymous true
listener 1883
persistence true
persistence_location /mosquitto/data/
log_dest file /mosquitto/log/mosquitto.log
The full list of configuration items can be found [here](https://mosquitto.org/man/mosquitto-conf-5.html].
Run the docker image with a mounted volume
Now, when invoking the docker image we use the -v
flag mapping the local filesystem into the docker container. The running container will now pick up the locally defined mosquitto.conf
. Invoke e.g:
% docker run -it --name mosquitto -p 1883:1883 -v $(pwd)/mosquitto:/mosquitto/ eclipse-mosquitto
Closing
I hope this post gave you a useful overview of getting an MQTT Mosquitto Broker up and running using Docker.
Hopefully, in future posts, I will be able to share further details of the dogfood project.