Docker recipes

Docker recipes#

This chapter offers some useful recipes when working with Plone containers.

Remove access log from Plone containers#

When you generate a project using Cookieplone, it creates Plone containers for your project that are based on the official plone/plone-backend images.

When you run your container or the official plone/plone-backend image with logging, the output mixes both the event log and the access log, making it hard to follow the logs you may have added to your application. In such cases, you may have a Docker Compose setup with several components including a proxy server that already provides access logs. Instead of duplicating the logging output, it is common to remove the access logging from the Plone container.

To do so, create a custom zope.ini file in your project's backend folder with the following content.

[app:zope]
use = egg:Zope#main
zope_conf = %(here)s/%(config_file)s

[server:main]
use = egg:waitress#main
host = 0.0.0.0
port = 8080
threads = 2
clear_untrusted_proxy_headers = false
max_request_body_size = 1073741824

[filter:translogger]
use = egg:Paste#translogger
setup_console_handler = False

[pipeline:main]
pipeline =
    egg:Zope#httpexceptions
    zope

[loggers]
keys = root, waitress.queue, waitress, wsgi

[handlers]
keys = accesslog, eventlog

[formatters]
keys = generic, message

[formatter_generic]
format = %(asctime)s %(levelname)s [%(name)s:%(lineno)s][%(threadName)s] %(message)s
datefmt = %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S

[formatter_message]
format = %(message)s

[logger_root]
level = INFO
handlers = eventlog

[logger_waitress.queue]
level = INFO
handlers = eventlog
qualname = waitress.queue
propagate = 0

[logger_waitress]
level = INFO
handlers = eventlog
qualname = waitress
propagate = 0

[logger_wsgi]
level = WARN
handlers = accesslog
qualname = wsgi
propagate = 0

[handler_accesslog]
class = StreamHandler
args = (sys.stdout,)
level = INFO
formatter = message

[handler_eventlog]
class = StreamHandler
args = (sys.stderr,)
level = INFO
formatter = generic

Comparing this file with the original zope.ini file that comes with the plone/plone-backend container, you may realize that the only change is the translogger configuration was removed from the pipeline section. This translogger middleware produces logs in the Apache Combined Log Format. The above configuration removes it from the setup.

After adding the zope.ini file in your project, adjust the Dockerfile by inserting the command COPY zope.ini etc/ before the RUN command as highlighted below. This new command copies the zope.ini file into the container.

# Add local code
COPY scripts/ scripts/
COPY . src
COPY zope.ini etc/

# Install local requirements and pre-compile mo files
RUN <<EOT

After making these changes, build the project container as usual. It will no longer output the access log, but will continue to output the event log.

Pack the ZODB#

Added in version Plone: 6.0.15 and Plone 6.1.1

A common maintenance task of a Plone instance is to pack the ZODB. Packing removes old revisions of objects. It is similar to routine vacuuming in PostgreSQL.

The official plone/plone-backend container and project containers based on them have a pack command to pack the ZODB. The command will work in standalone mode, ZEO mode, and with PostgreSQL only in RelStorage mode.

Invoke the command in a running container by passing in the appropriate command for the mode.

In standalone mode, ZODB is in a mounted volume, so the command would be similar to the following.

docker run -v /path/to/your/volume:/data plone/plone-backend pack

In ZEO mode, run the command next to your ZEO instance.

docker run -e ZEO_ADDRESS=zeo:8100 --link zeo plone/plone-backend pack

In RelStorage mode, pass the connection DSN.

docker run -e RELSTORAGE_DSN="dbname='plone' user='plone' host='db' password='password' port='5432'" plone/plone-backend pack

In Docker Swarm, if the database is only available on an internal network, it's required to specify the network. For this situation, it might be easier to use docker exec to run the pack command in an existing plone-backend container. The following command assumes that the service that runs the Plone instance is named backend. Replace backend with your container's name.

docker exec RELSTORAGE_DSN="dbname='plone' user='plone' host='db' password='password' port='5432' network='internal" backend pack

In running containers that use Docker Compose, the command is less complicated.

docker compose run backend pack

The above command assumes that the service that runs the Plone instance is named backend. Otherwise replace backend with your container's name.

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