How can plone-exporter be called manually inside a docker based Plone 6.0 Volto deployment?

[acsr]

Goal

Export content from an existing Plone Volto site to recreate the server from scratch.

Prerequisite

Installed and/or activate plone.exportimport and deployed it to the server.

Unclear from the docs

After following the docs at https://6.docs.plone.org/admin-guide/export-import.html I am not sure why the call for the config fails to fill the variables inside the conf file, because the context is not clear to me in the docker deployment setup.

Command and Error

Running the export command I get an error when using the Zope config as described below (I used the relstorage.conf path)

Connection to the server via ssh and a bash shell inside the backend.1 container

• plone_exporter, plone_importer commands are available inside the backend container /app/bin/ path
• target for export is created with mkdir -p /app/export/20250205_211044/
• relstorage.conf and zope.conf are at /app/etc/

Command is executed inside the backend container bash with current directory /app but explicit absolute path :

/app/bin/plone-exporter --include-revisions /app/etc/relstorage.conf Plone /app/export/20250205_211044/

Error:

...
ZConfig.SubstitutionReplacementError: no replacement for 'SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION'
(line 8 in file:///app/etc/relstorage.conf)

Steps to reproduce

• Plone Volto deployment created by Cookieplone 0.8.2 with site up and running.
  • Plone 6.0.14, Volto 18.7.0, Python 3.11 deployed on Ubuntu LTS 24.04
  • Project is using Traefik and Postgres Railstorage
• In the setup.py the plone.exportimport requirement is already present
• added an plone.exportimport line to the requirements.txt as plone.exportimport==1.0.0b1
• added at the end of the line in backend/instance.yaml `zcml_package_includes: 'my.project', 'plone.exportimport'
• Backend was rebuild using make backend-build
• Changes were commited and pushed to github
• Action rebuild the backend image
• Manual Deployment workflow executed with no errors

[davisagli]

@acsr In the plone-backend image these environment variables are set by docker-entrypoint.sh, so you need to run (assuming /app is the current working dir): ./docker-entrypoint.sh bin/plone-exporter --include-revisions etc/relstorage.conf Plone export/20250205_211044/

[acsr]

@davisagli Worked like a charm.
I missed to do a grepping like this would have done the job:

grep -R SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION .

result:

./docker-entrypoint.sh:[ -z ${SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION+x} ] && export SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION=C
./etc/zope.conf:security-policy-implementation $(SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION)
./etc/zeo.conf:security-policy-implementation $(SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION)
./etc/relstorage.conf:security-policy-implementation $(SECURITY_POLICY_IMPLEMENTATION)

Note: Complex Docker is a different world coming from Classic Plone using buildout and plain install.
Could become part of a troubleshooting section in the docs:
Running classic commands inside Docker containers for debugging

[acsr]

Created a pointer to this in the training docs for now: plone/training#923
Needs more love there.

[yurj]

Complex Docker is a different world coming from Classic Plone using buildout and plain install.

plone.exportimport could define a REST API to export/import via HTTP.

./docker-entrypoint.sh is run when the container start but when you exec a bash you don't have it. If you want to run something at the end of docker-entrypoint.sh (see last lines in https://github.com/plone/plone-backend/blob/6.1.x/skeleton/docker-entrypoint.sh), you just have to:

• have a cluster, so you can create new containers for debugging/running scripts
• have a dockerfile that create the container in your context
• do a docker run (needs some testing, I'm not sure it works exactly this way).

You can consider a container like a ZEO client, bin/plone-exporter needs an environment (variables, configurations) that tells him how to run as a Zope configured the same way of your context (

plone.exportimport/src/plone/exportimport/utils/cli.py

Line 36 in 5b6a39c

make_wsgi_app({}, zopeconf)

).

I see now that doing an exec is simpler, I think that posting the matter in plone community can help to discuss and find a way to run commands.

[acsr]

@yurj wrote:

I see now that doing an exec is simpler, I think that posting the matter in plone community can help to discuss and find a way to run commands.

I enhanced my post at https://community.plone.org/t/how-to-move-production-data-of-a-postgres-based-relstorage-from-a-currrent-cookieplone-based-docker-swarm-live-setup-to-a-similar-staging-site/22278/2 with a related comment mentioning this ticket. Hope that @fredvd can link an existing doc or writeup of the procedure he uses for the docker worker container approach.

[acsr]

@fredvd now linked his package in the community forum:
https://github.com/plone/postgres2zodb

The approach to setup and fire up a worker docker container could become part or linked in the troubleshooting.md instructions or other related docs later. Needs more lookup by me.