tragus/nfsd repository overview

⁠tragus/nfsd

tragus/webmin with a basic nfs server installed.

⁠Note to self

Using --net=host I've had good luck with pandrew/nfs-server. Except for my weird apache/webmin base image stuff, this is essentially the same and should behave.

⁠Why?

I use NFS in my home network to share storage between multiple physical and virtual machines including dailyi-use desktops and laptops. As I deprecate the VMs and move their functions to Docker, I need to maintain the services they provide. In this case: NFS. I know there are several options available for sharing and syncing data between containers but those don't solve my need for doing the same with non-container clients. I've tried a few of the nfs containers in the registry but didn't have any luck with them without making modifications similar to the grossness described below. So... here is my own attempt to build a workable (if not elegant) NFS server container.

⁠Building the image

git clone https://github.com/jcejohnson/docker-nfsd.git tragus-nfsd
cd tragus-nfsd
docker build -t tragus/nfsd .

⁠Running the container

Modify & use nfsd.launch to start the container. Use nfsd.shutdown to cleanly shutdown the server or docker stop to terminate the instance more or less immediately.

This is a mess at the moment. I can't figure out how to properly map the port(s) so that clients can mount the server's exported filesystems. After wasting several hours I decided to punt and just use --net=host. That's not without its own issues but it'll do for now.

docker run -d \
  --privileged \
  --net=host    \
  --name nfsd    \
  \
  -e apache_ipaddress=192.168.42.51 \
  \
  -e nfsd_hostname=nfshost      \
  -e nfsd_domainname=tragus.org  \
  -e nfsd_ipaddress=192.168.42.51 \
  \
  -v /usr/local/containers/nfsd/etc:/etc    \
  -v /var/run/nfsd-control:/var/run/container-control \
  \
  tragus/nfsd

--privileged is needed for access to all /dev that we need

--net=host maps the host's network stack into the container. This is really gross and should not be necessary if I can just work out the right set of port mappings.

'-e apache_ipaddress=...' tells the tragus/apache apache2 instance to bind to a specific interfae instead of all interfaces. This is important since --net=host will make all of the hosts interfaces available to the container and we may want some other container to also expose a webserver on some other virtual ip or the host's ip.

'-e nfsd_*=...' is not really necessary but I don't like that my nfsd container thinks its hostname is the same as the containing host.

⁠Persistent Data

Since apache, webmin and nfs all keep their configuration in /etc I took the easy route and extracted all of /etc from my first boot of the image into /usr/local/containers//etc. This gives me persistence of all of their configuration and I can use a similar technique later for managing the logs and other bits if I want.

⁠About nfsd Processes

When you 'ps -aef' on the container host you will see several nfsd* processes. Thse are actually bits of the kernel and very necessary for the in-container kernel-nfs-server to function.

⁠TODO

This is gross in lots of ways.

⁠See Also

Please read the tragus/webmin documentation to for current warnings: https://github.com/jcejohnson/docker-webmin⁠ (That document will point you to tragus/apache which you should also read.)