Docker data volumes with non-root user

Tue, Nov 11, 2014

One way of using docker volumes with non-root user, with camlistore as an example. camlistored is built beforehand with go run make.go -docker_camlistored.

Dockerfile:

FROM busybox

# create user for camlistore data storage
# use 3179 as uid to avoid collision
RUN adduser -u 3179 -D camli
USER camli
COPY camlistored /home/camli/camlistored
WORKDIR /home/camli
RUN mkdir -p .config/camlistore \
        && mkdir -p var/camlistore
VOLUME ["/home/camli/.config/camlistore", "/home/camli/var/camlistore"]
EXPOSE 3179
CMD ["./camlistored"]

Build the images and run the containers: (e.g. user/camlistore)

sudo docker create --name camlistore-data user/camlistore true
sudo docker run -d --name camlistore -p 3179:3179 --volumes-from camlistore-data user/camlistore

Keypoints:

1. Create a specific user (e.g. camli)
2. Create directories for the volumes with that user before running VOLUME (i.e. USER camli)
3. Create the data container
4. Run the server container mounting the volumes from the data container with –volumes-from