Error running erlang in Windows Container

Question

I'm attempting to get RabbitMQ up and running inside a Windows container but without a whole lot of luck. I've copied into the container the installation directories for RabbitMQ and Erlang but when I attempt to run erl.exe I'm told that beam.smp.dll is not able to be loaded.

PS C:\Program Files\erl8.2\bin> .\erl.exe
Unable to load emulator DLL
(C:\Program Files\erl8.2\erts-8.2\bin\beam.smp.dll)

Running the same command on the same installation directory on the host machine works just fine. I've checked that the file exists and that the checksums match. My bet is that there is some subtile difference in how the container loads the file and how the host loads the file. I'm just not sure where to even start looking.

Answer 1

Here is my Dockerfile which works. I can connect to RabbitMQ and the logs show it is running correctly, and I can login to the management UI using the guest/guest login from my host using IP/hostname of container.

# start with this container as the base
FROM microsoft/windowsservercore

# erlang installer download url
ENV erlang_download_url "http://erlang.org/download/otp_win64_19.3.exe"

# erlang will install to this location and rabbitmq will use this environment variable to locate it
ENV ERLANG_HOME c:\\erlang

# rabbitmq version used in download url and to rename folder extracted from zip file
ENV rabbitmq_version "3.6.9"

# rabbitmq zip package download url
ENV rabbit_download_url "https://www.rabbitmq.com/releases/rabbitmq-server/v3.6.9/rabbitmq-server-windows-$rabbitmq_version.zip"

# setup powershell options for RUN commands
SHELL ["powershell", "-Command", "$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'; $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue';"]

# download and install erlang using silent install option, and remove installer when done
RUN Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $env:erlang_download_url -OutFile erlang_install.exe ; \
        Start-Process -Wait -FilePath .\erlang_install.exe -ArgumentList /S, /D=$env:ERLANG_HOME ; \
        Remove-Item -Force erlang_install.exe

# download and extract rabbitmq, and remove zip file when done
RUN Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $env:rabbit_download_url -OutFile rabbitmq.zip ; \
        Expand-Archive -Path .\rabbitmq.zip -DestinationPath "c:\\" ; \
        Remove-Item -Force rabbitmq.zip

# remove version from rabbitmq folder name
RUN Rename-Item c:\rabbitmq_server-$env:rabbitmq_version c:\rabbitmq

# enable managment plugin
RUN c:\rabbitmq\sbin\rabbitmq-plugins.bat enable rabbitmq_management --offline

# tell rabbitmq where to find our custom config file
ENV RABBITMQ_CONFIG_FILE "c:\rabbitmq"
RUN ["cmd", "/c", "echo [{rabbit, [{loopback_users, []}]}].> c:\\rabbitmq.config"]

# run server when container starts - container will shutdown when this process ends
CMD "c:\rabbitmq\sbin\rabbitmq-server.bat"