What is the best way to manage permissions for Docker shared volumes

Question

I ve been playing around with Docker for a while and keep on finding the same issue when dealing with persistent data   I create my Dockerfile and expose a volume or use --volumes-from to mount a host folder inside my container   What permissions should I apply to the shared volume on the host   I can think of two options    So far I ve given everyone read write access  so I can write to the folder from the Docker container  Map the users from host into the container  so I can assign more granular permissions  Not sure this is possible though and haven t found much about it  So far  all I can do is run the container as some user  docker run -i -t -user  myuser  postgres  but this user has a different UID than my host myuser  so permissions do not work  Also  I m unsure if mapping the users will pose some security risks    Are there other alternatives   How are you guys gals dealing with this issue

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Ok  this is now being tracked at docker issue  7198  For now  I m dealing with this using your second option      Map the users from host into the container   Dockerfile             Users            TODO  Idk how to fix hardcoding uid  amp  gid  specifics to docker host machine RUN  adduser --system --uid 1000 --gid 1000           --home  home myguestuser --shell  bin bash myguestuser    CLI    DIR HOST and DIR GUEST belongs to uid gid 1000 1000 docker run -d -v   DIR HOST    DIR GUEST  elgalu myservice latest   UPDATE I m currently more inclined to Hamy answer

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For secure and change root for docker container an docker host try use --uidmap and --private-uids options  https   github com docker docker pull 4572 issuecomment-38400893  Also you may remove several capabilities  --cap-drop  in docker container for security  http   opensource com business 14 9 security-for-docker  UPDATE support should come in docker  gt  1 7 0  UPDATE Version 1 10 0  2016-02-04  add --userns-remap flag https   github com docker docker blob master CHANGELOG md security-2

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A very elegant solution can be seen on the official redis image and in general in all official images   Described in step-by-step process    Create redis user group before anything else   As seen on Dockerfile comments      add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently  regardless of whatever dependencies get added    Install gosu with Dockerfile   gosu is an alternative of su   sudo for easy step-down from root user   Redis is always run with redis user    Configure  data volume and set it as workdir   By configuring the  data volume with the VOLUME  data command we now have a separate volume that can either be docker volume or bind-mounted to a host dir   Configuring it as the workdir  WORKDIR  data  makes it be the default directory where commands are executed from    Add docker-entrypoint file and set it as ENTRYPOINT with default CMD redis-server   This means that all container executions will run through the docker-entrypoint script  and by default the command to be run is redis-server   docker-entrypoint is a script that does a simple function  Change ownership of current directory   data  and step-down from root to redis user to run redis-server   If the executed command is not redis-server  it will run the command directly    This has the following effect  If the  data directory is bind-mounted to the host  the docker-entrypoint will prepare the user permissions before running redis-server under redis user   This gives you the ease-of-mind that there is zero-setup in order to run the container under any volume configuration   Of course if you need to share the volume between different images you need to make sure they use the same userid groupid otherwise the latest container will hijack the user permissions from the previous one

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In my specific case  I was trying to build my node package with the node docker image so that I wouldn t have to install npm on the deployment server  It worked well until  outside out the container and on the host machine  I tried to move a file into the node modules directory that the node docker image had created  to which I was denied permissions because it was owned by root  I realized that I could work around this by copying the directory out of the container onto the host machine  Via docker docs        Files copied to the local machine are created with the UID GID of the   user which invoked the docker cp command    This is the bash code I used to change ownership of the directory created by and within the docker container   NODE IMAGE node builder docker run -v   pwd  build  build -w   build  --name  NODE IMAGE node 6-slim npm i --production   node modules is owned by root  so we need to copy it out  docker cp  NODE IMAGE  build node modules build lambda    you might have issues trying to remove the directory  node modules  within the shared volume  build   because it is owned by root  so remove the image and its volumes docker rm -vf  NODE IMAGE    true   If needed  you can remove the directory with a second docker container   docker run -v   pwd  build  build -w   build  --name  RMR IMAGE node 6-slim rm -r node modules

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Base Image Use this image  https   hub docker com r reduardo7 docker-host-user or Important  this destroys container portability across hosts  1  init sh    bin bash  if   getent passwd  DOCKDEV USER NAME  gt   dev null   then     echo  quot Creating user  DOCKDEV USER NAME  DOCKDEV GROUP NAME quot      groupadd --gid  DOCKDEV GROUP ID -r  DOCKDEV GROUP NAME     useradd --system --uid  DOCKDEV USER ID --gid  DOCKDEV GROUP ID           --home-dir  home --password  DOCKDEV USER NAME  DOCKDEV USER NAME     usermod -a -G sudo  DOCKDEV USER NAME     chown -R  DOCKDEV USER NAME  DOCKDEV GROUP NAME  home   fi  sudo -u  DOCKDEV USER NAME bash  2  Dockerfile FROM ubuntu latest   Volumes     VOLUME   quot  home data quot     Copy Files     COPY  home data init sh  home   Init     RUN chmod a x  home init sh  3  run sh    bin bash  DOCKDEV VARIABLES      DOCKDEV USER NAME  USERNAME    DOCKDEV USER ID  UID    DOCKDEV GROUP NAME   id -g -n  USERNAME     DOCKDEV GROUP ID   id -g  USERNAME      cmd  quot docker run quot   if     -z  quot   DOCKDEV VARIABLES  quot     then   for v in   DOCKDEV VARIABLES      do     cmd  quot   cmd  -e   v  quot    done fi     home usr data contains init sh  cmd -v  home usr data  home data -i -t my-image  home init sh  4  Build with docker 4  Run  sh run sh

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Here s an approach that still uses a data-only container but doesn t require it to be synced with the application container  in terms of having the same uid gid    Presumably  you want to run some app in the container as a non-root  USER without a login shell    In the Dockerfile   RUN useradd -s  bin false myuser    Set environment variables ENV VOLUME ROOT  data ENV USER myuser       ENTRYPOINT     entrypoint sh     Then  in entrypoint sh   chown -R  USER  USER  VOLUME ROOT su -s  bin bash -  USER -c  cd  repo build

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If you using Docker Compose  start the container in previleged mode   wordpress      image  wordpress 4 5 3     restart  always     ports        - 8084 80     privileged  true

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Try to add a command to Dockerfile  RUN usermod -u 1000 www-data   credits goes to https   github com denderello symfony-docker-example issues 2 issuecomment-94387272

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To share folder between docker host and docker container  try below command       docker  run  -v    pwd    pwd   -i -t  ubuntu   The -v flag mounts the current working directory into the container  When the host directory of a bind-mounted volume doesn   t exist  Docker will automatically create this directory on the host for you   However  there are 2 problems we have here    You cannot write to the volume mounted if you were non-root user because the shared file will be owned by other user in host  You shouldn t run the process inside your containers as root but even if you run as some hard-coded user it still won t match the user on your laptop Jenkins    Solution   Container  create a user say  testuser   by default user id will be starting from 1000   Host   create a group say  testgroup  with group id 1000  and chown the directory to the new group testgroup

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The same as you  I was looking for a way to map users groups from host to docker containers and this is the shortest way I ve found so far     version   3      services        my-service                        volumes              take uid gid lists from host           -  etc passwd  etc passwd ro           -  etc group  etc group ro             mount config folder           - path-to-my-configs my-service  etc my-service ro                 This is an extract from my docker-compose yml   The idea is to mount  in read-only mode  users groups lists from the host to the container thus after the container starts up it will have the same uid- username  as well as for groups  matchings with the host  Now you can configure user group settings for your service inside the container as if it was working on your host system    When you decide to move your container to another host you just need to change user name in service config file to what you have on that host

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UPDATE 2016-03-02  As of Docker 1 9 0  Docker has named volumes which replace data-only containers  The answer below  as well as my linked blog post  still has value in the sense of how to think about data inside docker but consider using named volumes to implement the pattern described below rather than data containers     I believe the canonical way to solve this is by using data-only containers  With this approach  all access to the volume data is via containers that use -volumes-from the data container  so the host uid gid doesn t matter   For example  one use case given in the documentation is backing up a data volume  To do this another container is used to do the backup via tar  and it too uses -volumes-from in order to mount the volume  So I think the key point to grok is  rather than thinking about how to get access to the data on the host with the proper permissions  think about how to do whatever you need -- backups  browsing  etc  -- via another container  The containers themselves need to use consistent uid gids  but they don t need to map to anything on the host  thereby remaining portable   This is relatively new for me as well but if you have a particular use case feel free to comment and I ll try to expand on the answer   UPDATE  For the given use case in the comments  you might have an image some graphite to run graphite  and an image some graphitedata as the data container  So  ignoring ports and such  the Dockerfile of image some graphitedata is something like   FROM debian jessie   add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently  regardless of other deps added later RUN groupadd -r graphite      amp  amp  useradd -r -g graphite graphite RUN mkdir -p  data graphite      amp  amp  chown -R graphite graphite  data graphite VOLUME  data graphite USER graphite CMD   echo    Data container for graphite     Build and create the data container   docker build -t some graphitedata Dockerfile docker run --name graphitedata some graphitedata   The some graphite Dockerfile should also get the same uid gids  therefore it might look something like this   FROM debian jessie   add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently  regardless of other deps added later RUN groupadd -r graphite      amp  amp  useradd -r -g graphite graphite       graphite installation     VOLUME  data graphite USER graphite CMD    bin graphite     And it would be run as follows   docker run --volumes-from graphitedata some graphite   Ok  now that gives us our graphite container and associated data-only container with the correct user group  note you could re-use the some graphite container for the data container as well  overriding the entrypoing cmd when running it  but having them as separate images IMO is clearer    Now  lets say you want to edit something in the data folder  So rather than bind mounting the volume to the host and editing it there  create a new container to do that job  Lets call it some graphitetools  Lets also create the appropriate user group  just like the some graphite image   FROM debian jessie   add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently  regardless of other deps added later RUN groupadd -r graphite      amp  amp  useradd -r -g graphite graphite VOLUME  data graphite USER graphite CMD    bin bash     You could make this DRY by inheriting from some graphite or some graphitedata in the Dockerfile  or instead of creating a new image just re-use one of the existing ones  overriding entrypoint cmd as necessary    Now  you simply run   docker run -ti --rm --volumes-from graphitedata some graphitetools   and then vi  data graphite whatever txt  This works perfectly because all the containers have the same graphite user with matching uid gid   Since you never mount  data graphite from the host  you don t care how the host uid gid maps to the uid gid defined inside the graphite and graphitetools containers  Those containers can now be deployed to any host  and they will continue to work perfectly   The neat thing about this is that graphitetools could have all sorts of useful utilities and scripts  that you can now also deploy in a portable manner   UPDATE 2  After writing this answer  I decided to write a more complete blog post about this approach  I hope it helps   UPDATE 3  I corrected this answer and added more specifics  It previously contained some incorrect assumptions about ownership and perms -- the ownership is usually assigned at volume creation time i e  in the data container  because that is when the volume is created  See this blog  This is not a requirement though -- you can just use the data container as a  reference handle  and set the ownership perms in another container via chown in an entrypoint  which ends with gosu to run the command as the correct user  If anyone is interested in this approach  please comment and I can provide links to a sample using this approach

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This is arguably not the best way for most circumstances  but it s not been mentioned yet so perhaps it will help someone     Bind mount host volume  Host folder FOOBAR is mounted in container  volume FOOBAR Modify your container s startup script to find GID of the volume you re interested in    TARGET GID   stat -c   g   volume FOOBAR  Ensure your user belongs to a group with this GID  you may have to create a new group   For this example I ll pretend my software runs as the nobody user when inside the container  so I want to ensure nobody belongs to a group with a group id equal to TARGET GID       EXISTS   cat  etc group   grep  TARGET GID   wc -l       Create new group using target GID and add nobody user   if    EXISTS     0     then     groupadd -g  TARGET GID tempgroup     usermod -a -G tempgroup nobody   else       GID exists  find group name and add     GROUP   getent group  TARGET GID   cut -d  -f1      usermod -a -G  GROUP nobody   fi     I like this because I can easily modify group permissions on my host volumes and know that those updated permissions apply inside the docker container  This happens without any permission or ownership modifications to my host folders files  which makes me happy    I don t like this because it assumes there s no danger in adding yourself to an arbitrary groups inside the container that happen to be using a GID you want  It cannot be used with a USER clause in a Dockerfile  unless that user has root privileges I suppose   Also  it screams hack job  -   If you want to be hardcore you can obviously extend this in many ways - e g  search for all groups on any subfiles  multiple volumes  etc

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My approach is to detect current UID GID  then create such user group inside the container and execute the script under him  As a result all files he will create will match the user on the host  which is the script      get location of this script no matter what your current folder is  this might break between shells so make sure you run bash LOCAL DIR     cd     dirname    BASH SOURCE 0        amp  amp  pwd       get current IDs USER ID   id -u  GROUP ID   id -g   echo  Mount  LOCAL DIR into docker  and match the host IDs   USER ID  GROUP ID  inside the container    docker run -v  LOCAL DIR  host mount -i debian 9 4-slim bash -c  set -euo pipefail  amp  amp  groupadd -r -g  GROUP ID lowprivgroup  amp  amp  useradd -u  USER ID lowprivuser -g  GROUP ID  amp  amp  cd  host mount  amp  amp  su -c   runMyScriptAsRegularUser sh lowprivuser

[docker] What is the (best) way to manage permissions for Docker shared volumes?

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