Docker creates files as root in mounted volume

Matt R picture Matt R · May 5, 2015 · Viewed 30.3k times · Source

I'm using Docker (1.3.1) to build RPMs inside a container:

docker run -v /home/matt/build:/build build-rpm /build/build-pkg.sh

This works fine (my user is in the docker group, so I don't need to sudo) and drops a completed .rpm file in the current directory. The problem is that the file is created as owned by root.

How can I arrange it so that the file is created owned by the same user as I run docker with?

Answer

VonC picture VonC · May 5, 2015

You could try to create (in the Dockerfile of a custom image) a user and set it as the one used by the container

RUN adduser --system --group --shell /bin/sh auser \
 && mkdir /home/auser/bin
USER auser

Then check if a docker run -v /home/matt/build:/build build-rpm mounts the shared folder in /build as auser.


Another option mentioned in issue 2259:

If you chown the volume (on the host side) before bind-mounting it, it will work.
In that case, you could do:

mkdir /tmp/www
chown 101:101 /tmp/www
docker run -v /tmp/www:/var/www ubuntu stat -c "%U %G" /var/www

(Assuming that 101:101 is the UID:GID of the www-data user in your container.)