Would you add MQTT Explorer to the stack?

[smadds]

It would be great to have MQTT Explorer in the IOTStack.

I have found that the smeagolworms4/mqtt-explorer docker image is stable on my RPi

Thanks for all your good work

[Paraphraser]

I thought this sounded like a good idea and I was going to prepare a Pull Request to add the container to IOTstack but I'm not having much luck.

By way of background, I have been running the macOS version of MQTT Explorer. The macOS version works perfectly so I don't know why that experience isn't translating to the Docker version.

This is the service definition I'm using:

  mqtt-explorer:
    container_name: mqtt-explorer
    image: smeagolworms4/mqtt-explorer
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - HTTP_PORT=4000
      - CONFIG_PATH=/mqtt-explorer/config
      # - HTTP_USER=
      # - HTTP_PASSWORD=
      # - SSL_KEY_PATH=
      # - SSH_CERT_PATH=
    ports:
      - "4000:4000"
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/mqtt-explorer:/mqtt-explorer/config

I start the container, then check its log:

$ docker logs mqtt-explorer
LOAD MODULE WRAPPED: electron
Start MQTT Explorer node server

    - http-port: 4000
    - config-path: /mqtt-explorer/config
    - http-user: 
    - http-password: 
    - ssl-key-path: 
    - ssl-cert-path: 

subscribing connection/add/mqtt
subscribing connection/remove
subscribing storage/store
subscribing storage/load
subscribing storage/clear
server is listening on 4000

Nothing that screams out as being wrong. I fire up a browser and connect to the instance. Then:

1. I delete the two default connections.

2. I hit + for a new connection:

   • I give it a name.

   • I turn off Validate certificate

   • Encryption is off - I leave it alone

   • For the host name I supply mqtt.my.domain.com. This is the same domain name as is used by every device in the house (ESP32, ESP8266, Pis, Macs) to publish, as well as any tool (except Node-RED) that subscribes to any topic.

     Node-RED is running on the same host as Mosquitto so flows just subscribe to mosquitto:1883 across the internal bridged network.

   • Port defaults to 1883 - I leave it alone

   • Username and password are empty - I leave them alone (my Mosquitto instance lives behind my firewall and is never exposed so I don't care about credentials)

   • I click Advanced:

     • All topics of interest match /merle/# so I add that
     • I delete the two default topics
     • I click Back

   • I click Save

   • I click Connect.

3. The window repaints. Writes "disconnect" on the right hand side and puts mqtt.my.domain.com in the top left hand corner.

4. Nothing else happens.

5. I click on the domain name and …

Splat. The dialog box that appears contains:

Oooooops!
I hoped that you would never see this window, but MQTT-Explorer had an unexpected error.

cleanup@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/3.bundle.js:25338:38
@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15158:251
@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15274:468
Ki@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15158:174
Mi@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15165:223
Sj@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15197:75
Sj@[native code]
@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15274:468
Jj@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15192:372
yj@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15183:378
yj@[native code]
@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15067:116
@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15274:468
fg@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15067:63
gg@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15066:498
Ga@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15231:97
gd@http://sec-dev.my.domain.com:4000/vendors.bundle.js:15012:373
gd@[native code]
Please report this issue with a short description of what happened to https://github.com/thomasnordquist/MQTT-Explorer/issues

I tap Restart and try again. Same result.

I re-check the log. The only additional lines are:

New client: b1ZomcXmzQGr6RP-AAAB
subscribing conn/publish/73227bd0-c070-4c92-bc4f-ae6d2eb7d47a
New client: OyvHogUEBzN0g9lvAAAD
unsubscribeAll conn/publish/73227bd0-c070-4c92-bc4f-ae6d2eb7d47a
subscribing conn/publish/73227bd0-c070-4c92-bc4f-ae6d2eb7d47a
New client: irs-S8dWqHOSnT6eAAAF

The settings file contains:

$ cat ~/IOTstack/volumes/mqtt-explorer/settings.json 
{
  "ConnectionManager_connections": {
    "73227bd0-c070-4c92-bc4f-ae6d2eb7d47a": {
      "configVersion": 1,
      "certValidation": false,
      "clientId": "mqtt-explorer-8dbb21e8",
      "id": "73227bd0-c070-4c92-bc4f-ae6d2eb7d47a",
      "name": "Merle",
      "encryption": false,
      "subscriptions": [
        {
          "topic": "/merle/#",
          "qos": 0
        }
      ],
      "type": "mqtt",
      "host": "mqtt.my.domain.com",
      "port": 1883,
      "protocol": "mqtt"
    }
  }
}

All looks correct.

When I very carefully do the identical configuration steps in the macOS app, I get:

which is obviously working, while the browser-based version just gets:

The "mqtt.my.domain.com" line in the browser never gets a disclosure triangle and, as I said, clicking on the line results in the error message.

Noting that the macOS version:

1. starts by drawing the "mqtt.my.domain.com" line without the disclosure triangle; but
2. almost immediately redraws with the disclosure triangle,

my working hypothesis was:

• the redraw probably occurred when the first message was received from the broker. That's always the /merle/camera/snoop. It has the retain flag set so it arrives immediately.
• if the container version wasn't redrawing to show the disclosure triangle, perhaps the container wasn't able to reach the Mosquitto broker.

Not so. Proof.

I have a small bash script named mossieMonitor that uses mosquitto_sub to subscribe to /merle/# and bungs out timestamped messages as they arrive. Here it is running outside container-space on the Pi:

$ mossieMonitor 
2023-04-21T23:20:08+1000 /merle/camera/snoop/hello {"message": "camera passed hello test"}
2023-04-21T23:20:11+1000 /merle/box-hiking/grid {"T01":513.17,"T02":0.00,"a":0.00,"v":244.50,"w":0.00,"pf":1.00,"f":49.99}
2023-04-21T23:20:21+1000 /merle/box-hiking/grid {"T01":513.17,"T02":0.00,"a":0.00,"v":244.50,"w":0.00,"pf":1.00,"f":50.00}
2023-04-21T23:20:31+1000 /merle/box-hiking/grid {"T01":513.17,"T02":0.00,"a":0.00,"v":244.50,"w":0.00,"pf":1.00,"f":50.00}
^C

The mqtt-explorer container doesn't have the Mosquitto clients so I need to add those:

$ docker exec mqtt-explorer ash -c "apk update && apk add mosquitto-clients"
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/main/aarch64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community/aarch64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
v3.15.8-46-gf5157076646 [https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/main]
v3.15.8-46-gf5157076646 [https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.15/community]
OK: 15742 distinct packages available
(1/4) Installing cjson (1.7.15-r0)
(2/4) Installing c-ares (1.18.1-r0)
(3/4) Installing mosquitto-libs (2.0.14-r1)
(4/4) Installing mosquitto-clients (2.0.14-r1)
Executing busybox-1.34.1-r5.trigger
OK: 8 MiB in 20 packages

Copy the script into the container:

$ docker cp ~/.local/bin/mossieMonitor mqtt-explorer:.
Preparing to copy...
Copying to container - 2.048kB
Successfully copied 2.048kB to mqtt-explorer:.

Run the script inside the container:

$ docker exec mqtt-explorer /mossieMonitor
2023-04-21T13:21:05+0000 /merle/camera/snoop/hello {"message": "camera passed hello test"}
2023-04-21T13:21:11+0000 /merle/box-hiking/grid {"T01":513.17,"T02":0.00,"a":0.00,"v":244.30,"w":0.00,"pf":1.00,"f":49.96}
2023-04-21T13:21:21+0000 /merle/box-hiking/grid {"T01":513.17,"T02":0.00,"a":0.00,"v":244.20,"w":0.00,"pf":1.00,"f":49.97}
^C

So, the container can definitely communicate with the broker.

I've tried Safari and Chrome to see if this is a browser difference. I've tried a laptop, desktop and iPad to see if it's a platform difference.

I'm stumped.

You say it's working perfectly well for you so it's probably something incredibly obvious and dumb that I'm doing. Any ideas?

---

I'm doing all this on a Pi4 running full 64-bit Bullseye:

$ uname -a
Linux sec-dev 6.1.21-v8+ #1642 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr  3 17:24:16 BST 2023 aarch64 GNU/Linux