docker run -ti --rm -v DataVolume3:/var ubuntu
Lets say I have a volume DataVolume 3 which pulls the contents of /var in the ubuntu container
even after killing this ubuntu container the volume remains and I can use this volume DataVolume3 to mount it to other containers.
This means with the deletion of container the volume mounts are not deleted.
How does this work ?
Does that volume mount mean that it copies the contents of /var into some local directory because this does not look like a symbolic link ?
If I have the container running and I create a file in the container then the same file gets copied to the host path ?
How does this whole process of volume mount from container to host and host to container work ?
Volumes are used for persistent storage and the volumes persists independent of the lifecycle of the container.
We can go through a demo to understand it clearly.
First, let's create a container using the named volumes approach as:
docker run -ti --rm -v DataVolume3:/var ubuntu
This will create a docker volume named DataVolume3 and it can be viewed in the output of docker volume ls:
docker volume ls
DRIVER VOLUME NAME
local DataVolume3
Docker stores the information about these named volumes in the directory /var/lib/docker/volumes/ (*):
ls /var/lib/docker/volumes/
1617af4bce3a647a0b93ed980d64d97746878564b141f30b6110d0818bf32b76 DataVolume3
Next, let's write some data from the ubuntu container at the mounted path var:
echo "hello" > var/file1
root#2b67a89a0050:/# cat /var/file1
hello
We can see this data with cat even after deleting the container:
cat /var/lib/docker/volumes/DataVolume3/_data/file1
hello
Note: Although, we are able to access the volumes like shown above but it not a recommended practice to access volumes data like this.
Now, next time when another container uses the same volume then the data from the volume gets mounted at the container directory specified as part of -v flag.
(*) The location may vary based on OS as pointed by David and probably can be seen by the docker volume inspect command.
Docker has a concept of a named volume. By default the storage for this lives somewhere on your host system and you can't directly access it from outside Docker (*). A named volume has its own lifecycle, it can be independently docker volume rm'd, and if you start another container mounting the same volume, it will have the same persistent content.
The docker run -v option takes some unit of storage, either a named volume or a specific host directory, and mounts it (as in the mount(8) command) in a specific place in the container filesystem. This will hide what was originally in the image and replace it with the volume content.
As you note, if the thing you mount is an empty named volume, it will get populated from the image content at container initialization time. There are some really important caveats on this functionality:
Named volume initialization happens only if the volume is totally empty.
The contents of the named volume never automatically update.
If the volume isn't empty, the volume contents completely replace what's in the image, even if it's changed.
The initialization happens only on native Docker, and not for example in Kubernetes.
The initialization happens only on named volumes, and not for bind-mounted host directories.
With all of these caveats, I'd avoid relying on this functionality.
If you need to mount a volume into a container, assume it will be empty when your entrypoint or the main container command starts. If you need a particular directory layout or file structure there, an entrypoint script can create it; if you're expecting it to hold particular data, keep a copy of it somewhere else in your image and copy it in if it's not already there (or, perhaps, always).
(*) On native Linux you can find a filesystem location for it, but accessing this isn't a best practice. On other OSes this will be hidden inside a virtual machine or other opaque storage. If you need to directly access the data (or inject config files, or read log files) a docker run -v /host/path:/container/path bind mount is a better choice.
Volumes are part of neither the container nor the host. Well, technically everything resides in the host machine. But the docker directories are only accessible by users in "docker" group. The files in these directories are separately managed by docker.
"Volumes are stored in a part of the host filesystem which is managed by Docker (/var/lib/docker/volumes/ on Linux)."
Hence volumes are like the union of files under the docker container and the host itself. Any addition on either end will be added to the volume(/var/lib/docker/volumes), not hard copy, rather something like symbol link
As volumes can be shared across different containers, deleting a container does not cascade to the volumes associated with it.
To remove unused volumes:
docker volume prune .
First time docker ser here, running on Raspberry Pi 3 (Hypriot OS). I have an external hdd attached to my raspberry pi to store all the files. The os is on the sdcard.
I am setting up many images on docker: sonarr, radarr, emby server and bittorrent client.
I have created all containers following the lines on docker hub page, so I attached all of the folders using mount bind (-v /some/path:/some/path).
Now the documentation says volume is better because it doesn't rely on filesystem. Also, I am having problems because I want to use hardlink between files on my external hdd, but because I am using mount binds, it seems to not work when calling hardlink from one mount to another on the same hdd. I think adding only one mount bind should solve this but I just want to make the config correct now.
Is volume an option to store all the movies or should I keep using mount bind?
In canse of volume, can I specify the external hdd to store movies? I have docker installed on an sdcard but I need the movies on my external hdd.
I have used docker create volume --name something -o device=/myhddmount/ but I am not sure if this is ok, because docker volume inspect shows a mountpoint on the sdcard. Also, when I create the volume, should I set -o type=ext4? because according to the manual etx4 doesn't has a device= option.
Thanks!
I wonder if I can mount an image(ex. ubuntu image) in docker whose storage driver is devicemapper "without executing it as a container".
Actually I succeeded to mount the filesystem in a container like this.
type "docker run -it ubuntu"
type "df -h"
found that "/dev/dm-3" was mounted on "/var/lib/docker/devicemapper/mnt/b8~~~"
type "dd if=/dev/dm-3 of=result.dd"
mount result.dd and found rootfs directory
look into it
I need to find the way to mount an image without executing it as a container.
(I am doing some research in digital forensics.)
I already know the command "docker save~", "docker~ export" but I don't mean these things.
I scrutinized under "/var/lib/docker" but only found a suspicious directory which is "/var/lib/docker/image/devicemapper/layerdb/sha256/" and each directory under this path has its own "tar-split.json.gz" file. I untarred it and found that it means some differences between layers?!
And I don't know what to do more form now. Is there anyone who can help me, please ㅜㅜ. I am doing this because when we investigate a docker-based system, we need to look into the filesystem in an image without making the image a container and we need to "dd" the filesystem in it and import the ".dd" file to another computer used for investigation.
How can I use different filesystems in a container?
I have tried to make an img with XFS filesystem.
mkfs.xfs proba.img
It was succesful, but when tried to mount it, get following error. Already tried to use chmod, but same error.
mount: block device /root/proba.img is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: cannot mount block device /root/proba.img read-only
xfs_info's output: proba.img is not a mounted XFS filesystem
Is XFS(or another) filesystem usage possible in a single conatiner?
As per this question too, it's not possible to mount a filesystem inside a container.
You'll have to mount the new image in the Docker host and expose it to the container as a volume. See question above for examples.
I want to list all container directories that are mounted volumes.
I.e. to be able to get similar info I get from
docker inspect --format "{{ .Volumes }}" <self>
But from within the container and without having docker installed in there.
I tried cat /proc/mounts, but I couldn't find a proper filter for it.
(EDIT - this may no longer work on Mac) If your Docker host is OS X, the mounted volumes will be type osxfs (or fuse.osxfs). You can run a
mount | grep osxfs | awk '{print $3}'
and get a list of all the mounted volumes.
If your Docker host is Linux (at least Ubuntu 14+, maybe others), the volumes appear to all be on /dev, but not on a device that is in your container's /dev filesystem. The volumes will be alongside /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/hostname, and /etc/hosts. If you do a mount | grep ^/dev to start, then filter out any of the files in ls /dev/*, then filter out the three files listed above, you should be left with host volumes.
mount | grep ^/dev/ | grep -v /etc | awk '{print $3}'
My guess is the specifics may vary from Linux to Linux. Not ideal, but at least possible to figure out.
Assuming you want to check what volumes are mounted from inside a linux based container you can look up entries beginning with "/dev" in /etc/mtab, removing the /etc entries
$ grep "^/dev" /etc/mtab | grep -v " \/etc/"
/dev/nvme0n1p1 /var/www/site1 ext4 rw,relatime,discard,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/nvme0n1p1 /var/www/site2 ext4 rw,relatime,discard,data=ordered 0 0
As you can read from many of the comments you had, a container is initially nothing but a restricted, reserved part of resources that is totally cut away from the rest of your machine. It is not aware of being a Docker, and inside the container everything behaves as if it were a separate machine. Sort of like the matrix, I guess ;)
You get access to the host machine's kernel and its resources, but yet again restricted as just a filtered out set. This is done with the awesome "cgroups" functionality that comes with Unix/Linux kernels.
Now the good news: There are multiple ways for you to provide the information to your Docker, but that is something that you are going to have to provide and build yourself.
The easiest ad most powerful way is to mount the Unix socket located on your host at /var/run/docker.sock to the inside of your container at the same location. That way, when you use the Docker client inside your container you are directly talking to the docker engine on your host.
However, with great power comes great responsibility. This is a nice setup, but it is not very secure. Once someone manages to get into your docker it has root access to your host system this way.
A better way would be to provide a list of mounts through the environment settings, or clinging on to some made-up conventions to be able to predict the mounts.
(Do you realize that there is a parameter for mounting, to give mounts an alias for inside your Docker?)
The docker exec command is probably what you are looking for.
This will let you run arbitrary commands inside an existing container.
For example:
docker exec -it <mycontainer> bash
Of course, whatever command you are running must exist in the container filesystem.
#docker cp >>>> Copy files/folders between a container and the local filesystem
docker cp [OPTIONS] CONTAINER:SRC_PATH DEST_PATH
docker cp [OPTIONS] SRC_PATH CONTAINER:DEST_PATH
to copy full folder:
docker cp ./src/build b081dbbb679b:/usr/share/nginx/html
Note – This will copy build directory in container’s …/nginx/html/ directory to copy only files present in folder:
docker cp ./src/build/ b081dbbb679b:/usr/share/nginx/html
Note – This will copy contents of build directory in container’s …./nginx/html/ directory
Docker Storage options:
Volumes are stored in a part of the host filesystem which is managed by Docker(/var/lib/docker/volumes/ on Linux). Non-Docker processes should not modify this part of the filesystem. Volumes are the best way to persist data in Docker.
When you create a volume, it is stored within a directory on the Docker host. When you mount the volume into a container, this directory is what is mounted into the container. This is similar to the way that bind mounts work, except that volumes are managed by Docker and are isolated from the core functionality of the host machine.
A given volume can be mounted into multiple containers simultaneously. When no running container is using a volume, the volume is still available to Docker and is not removed automatically. You can remove unused volumes using docker volume prune.
When you mount a volume, it may be named or anonymous. Anonymous volumes are not given an explicit name when they are first mounted into a container, so Docker gives them a random name that is guaranteed to be unique within a given Docker host. Besides the name, named and anonymous volumes behave in the same ways.
Volumes also support the use of volume drivers, which allow you to store your data on remote hosts or cloud providers, among other possibilities.
Bind mounts may be stored anywhere on the host system. They may even be important system files or directories. Non-Docker processes on the Docker host or a Docker container can modify them at any time.
Available since the early days of Docker. Bind mounts have limited functionality compared to volumes. When you use a bind mount, a file or directory on the host machine is mounted into a container. The file or directory is referenced by its full path on the host machine. The file or directory does not need to exist on the Docker host already. It is created on demand if it does not yet exist. Bind mounts are very performant, but they rely on the host machine’s filesystem having a specific directory structure available. If you are developing new Docker applications, consider using named volumes instead. You can’t use Docker CLI commands to directly manage bind mounts.
One side effect of using bind mounts, for better or for worse, is that you can change the host filesystem via processes running in a container, including creating, modifying, or deleting important system files or directories. This is a powerful ability which can have security implications, including impacting non-Docker processes on the host system.
tmpfs mounts are stored in the host system’s memory only, and are never written to the host system’s filesystem.
A tmpfs mount is not persisted on disk, either on the Docker host or within a container. It can be used by a container during the lifetime of the container, to store non-persistent state or sensitive information. For instance, internally, swarm services use tmpfs mounts to mount secrets into a service’s containers.
If you need to specify volume driver options, you must use --mount.
-v or --volume: Consists of three fields, separated by colon characters (:). The fields must be in the correct order, and the meaning of each field is not immediately obvious.
o In the case of named volumes, the first field is the name of the volume, and is unique on a given host machine. For anonymous volumes, the first field is omitted.
o The second field is the path where the file or directory will be mounted in the container.
o The third field is optional, and is a comma-separated list of options, such as ro. These options are discussed below.
• --mount: Consists of multiple key-value pairs, separated by commas and each consisting of a = tuple. The --mount syntax is more verbose than -v or --volume, but the order of the keys is not significant, and the value of the flag is easier to understand.
o The type of the mount, which can be bind, volume, or tmpfs. This topic discusses volumes, so the type will always be volume.
o The source of the mount. For named volumes, this is the name of the volume. For anonymous volumes, this field is omitted. May be specified as source or src.
o The destination takes as its value the path where the file or directory will be mounted in the container. May be specified as destination, dst, or target.
o The readonly option, if present, causes the bind mount to be mounted into the container as read-only.
o The volume-opt option, which can be specified more than once, takes a key-value pair consisting of the option name and its value.