How to mount local volumes in docker machine

I am trying to use docker-machine with docker-compose. The file docker-compose.yml has definitions as follows:

web:
  build: .
  command: ./run_web.sh
  volumes:
    - .:/app
  ports:
    - "8000:8000"
  links:
    - db:db
    - rabbitmq:rabbit
    - redis:redis

When running docker-compose up -d all goes well until trying to execute the command and an error is produced:

Cannot start container b58e2dfa503b696417c1c3f49e2714086d4e9999bd71915a53502cb6ef43936d: [8] System error: exec: "./run_web.sh": stat ./run_web.sh: no such file or directory

Local volumes are not mounted to the remote machine. Whats the recommended strategy to mount the local volumes with the webapps' code?

Docker-machine automounts the users directory... But sometimes that just isn't enough.

I don't know about docker 1.6, but in 1.8 you CAN add an additional mount to docker-machine

Add Virtual Machine Mount Point (part 1)

CLI: (Only works when machine is stopped)

VBoxManage sharedfolder add <machine name/id> --name <mount_name> --hostpath <host_dir> --automount

So an example in windows would be

/c/Program\ Files/Oracle/VirtualBox/VBoxManage.exe sharedfolder add default --name e --hostpath 'e:\' --automount

GUI: (does NOT require the machine be stopped)

1. Start "Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager"
2. Right-Click <machine name> (default)
3. Settings...
4. Shared Folders
5. The Folder+ Icon on the Right (Add Share)
6. Folder Path: <host dir> (e:)
7. Folder Name: <mount name> (e)
8. Check on "Auto-mount" and "Make Permanent" (Read only if you want...) (The auto-mount is sort of pointless currently...)

Mounting in boot2docker (part 2)

Manually mount in boot2docker:

1. There are various ways to log in, use "Show" in "Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager", or ssh/putty into docker by IP address docker-machine ip default, etc...
2. sudo mkdir -p <local_dir>
3. sudo mount -t vboxsf -o defaults,uid=`id -u docker`,gid=`id -g docker` <mount_name> <local_dir>

But this is only good until you restart the machine, and then the mount is lost...

Adding an automount to boot2docker:

While logged into the machine

1. Edit/create (as root) /mnt/sda1/var/lib/boot2docker/bootlocal.sh, sda1 may be different for you...

2. Add

   mkdir -p <local_dir>
   mount -t vboxsf -o defaults,uid=`id -u docker`,gid=`id -g docker` <mount_name> <local_dir>
   

With these changes, you should have a new mount point. This is one of the few files I could find that is called on boot and is persistent. Until there is a better solution, this should work.

Old method: Less recommended, but left as an alternative

• Edit (as root) /mnt/sda1/var/lib/boot2docker/profile, sda1 may be different for you...

• Add

  add_mount() {
    if ! grep -q "try_mount_share $1 $2" /etc/rc.d/automount-shares ; then
      echo "try_mount_share $1 $2" >> /etc/rc.d/automount-shares
    fi
  }
  
  add_mount <local dir> <mount name>
  

As a last resort, you can take the slightly more tedious alternative, and you can just modify the boot image.

• git -c core.autocrlf=false clone https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker.git
• cd boot2docker
• git -c core.autocrlf=false checkout v1.8.1 #or your appropriate version
• Edit rootfs/etc/rc.d/automount-shares

• Add try_mount_share <local_dir> <mount_name> line right before fi at the end. For example

  try_mount_share /e e
  

  Just be sure not to set the to anything the os needs, like /bin, etc...

• docker build -t boot2docker . #This will take about an hour the first time :(
• docker run --rm boot2docker > boot2docker.iso
• Backup the old boot2docker.iso and copy your new one in its place, in ~/.docker/machine/machines/

This does work, it's just long and complicated

docker version 1.8.1, docker-machine version 0.4.0

Also ran into this issue and it looks like local volumes are not mounted when using docker-machine. A hack solution is to

1. get the current working directory of the docker-machine instance docker-machine ssh <name> pwd

2. use a command line tool like rsync to copy folder to remote system

   rsync -avzhe ssh --progress <name_of_folder> username@remote_ip:<result _of_pwd_from_1>.
   

The default pwd is /root so the command above would be rsync -avzhe ssh --progress <name_of_folder> username@remote_ip:/root

NB: you would need to supply the password for the remote system. You can quickly create one by ssh into the remote system and creating a password.

3. change the volume mount point in your docker-compose.yml file from .:/app to /root/<name_of_folder>:/app

4. run docker-compose up -d

NB when changes are made locally, don't forget to rerun rsync to push the changes to the remote system.

Its not perfect but it works. An issue is ongoing https://github.com/docker/machine/issues/179

Other project that attempt to solve this include docker-rsync

At the moment I can't really see any way to mount volumes on machines, so the approach by now would be to somehow copy or sync the files you need into the machine.

There are conversations on how to solve this issue on the docker-machine's github repo. Someone made a pull request implementing scp on docker-machine and it's already merged on master, so it's very likely that the next release will include it.

Since it's not yet released, by now I would recommend that if you have your code hosted on github, just clone your repo before you run the app

web:
  build: .
  command: git clone https://github.com/my/repo.git; ./repo/run_web.sh
  volumes:
    - .:/app
  ports:
    - "8000:8000"
  links:
    - db:db
    - rabbitmq:rabbit
    - redis:redis

Update: Looking further I found that the feature is already available in the latest binaries, when you get them you'll be able to copy your local project running a command like this:

docker-machine scp -r . dev:/home/docker/project

Being this the general form:

docker-machine scp [machine:][path] [machine:][path]

So you can copy files from, to and between machines.

Cheers!1