How to compose an external data directory in PostgreSQL image within Docker?

Question

I'm trying to create a couple of containers with Docker. One is a postgres:latest image and the other is ubuntu:latest image with postgresql-client installed.

I have an existing database cluster in my localhost that I've used before install docker, of course. Now I want to use that cluster in my PostgreSQL container. The path in my computer is /Users/Marco/Data.

I've created a volume too, with the command docker volume create --opt device=/Users/Marco/Data data_container to store the cluster in it.

Then tried to make a docker-compose.ymlfile with the following content:

version: '2' 
services:
 db:
  image: postgres
  environment:
  - PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data/
  ports:
  - "5432:5432"
  volumes:
  - data_container:/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata


 shell:
  image: ubuntu_pgsql
  command: /bin/bash
  tty: true
  stdin_open: true 
  links:
  - db

volumes:
 data_container:
  external: true

When I want to launch the containers with docker-compose up -d it shows me the following error:

ERROR: for db  Cannot start service db: error while mounting volume    '/var/lib/docker/volumes/data_container/_data': error while mounting volume  with options: type='' device='/Users/Marco/Data' o='': no such device
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.

What could be failing? Thanks.

Carlos Osiel · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-07 20:46:08Z

3

If data container is a directory you should declare as:

volumes:
  - ./data_container:/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata

If you used a data_container without ./ before, docker compose understand that is a file, not a directory.

edited Apr 7, 2017 at 20:46

answered Apr 7, 2017 at 20:24

Carlos Osiel

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1 Comment

Marco Over a year ago

No, what I want to do exactly is: 1. Map my old cluster into a volume. 2. Use that volume with the PostgreSQL container.

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