How do you mount an external drive to use in Docker compose for Plex media data?

General
1

I’m just seeking out some advice and examples.

I’m moving from docker Desktop on Windows to Docker on Ubuntu. And I’m just wondering how to mount an external drive to use in Docker compose for Plex media data.

Any advice, or examples, is welcome and appreciated.

I was given this as an example, but it confused me:

Let’s say I have an external Drive at /media/usb1

How do I mount this for a container to use in Docker Compose?

Any help is appreciated.

2

you can use bind-mounts.

my trimmed docker-compose.yml looks like this

version: '3'
services:
  plex:
    container_name: plex
    image: plexinc/pms-docker:latest
    hostname: docker_plex
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 32400:32400/tcp
      - 3005:3005/tcp
      - 8324:8324/tcp
      - 32469:32469/tcp
#      - 1900:1900/udp
      - 32410:32410/udp
      - 32412:32412/udp
      - 32413:32413/udp
      - 32414:32414/udp
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
      - 'ADVERTISE_IP=http://192.168.1.111:32400/'
    volumes:
      - ./plex-config:/config
      - /media/music:/media/music:ro
      - /media/photo:/media/photo:ro
      - /media/recordings:/media/recordings:ro
      - /media/video:/media/video:ro
2 Likes
3

Thanks for the reply.

Can you give an example of how to set a bind mount? I’m also looking at the Docker documents.

4

bind-mount = mount local folder in container.
example is in my previous post :wink:

volumes:
  - /media/music:/media/music:ro

This mounts /media/music read-only (ro) from my docker-host as /media/music inside the container.

First folder is the host-folder and the second one the container-folder.

1 Like
5

Ok. I see. Thank you for explaining. I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m confident with Docker :+1:

6

Would this be correct?

-  /media/ext4tb/tv:/media/tv:ro
7

just try it :wink:
but looks correct if the folders exists.

you can also open a shell inside the container to check /media/tv

there are also amlot of good videos an youtube about volumes.

2 Likes
8

I’ve swapped over from Windows 11 to Ubuntu. Docker is so easy on Ubuntu compared with Windows WSL2. Thanks for your help.

9

I have tried almost every variation of lines to mount my NAS that is mounted onto my PC hosting the Docker for calibre-web and am still unable to get out of the VM it creates. Sorry if this is a dumb issue I am running into, but is there something I’m missing for giving Docker applications access to folders outside of the VM? I have run into this issue with multiple different Docker programs and would appreciate any help.

10

Here is my docker compose for reference.

calibre-web:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:latest
container_name: calibre-web
environment:
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/Edmonton
- DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-calibre #optional
- OAUTHLIB_RELAX_TOKEN_SCOPE=1 #optional
volumes:
- /Docker/homarr/calibre-web:/config
- /libraries/books/calibre:/books
ports:
- 8083:8083
restart: unless-stopped

I have also tried such variations of mounting as

/M:/libraries/books/calibre:/books

/m/libraries/books/calibre:/books

./libraries/books/calibre:/books

None of these allow me to access the folder I tried mounting when selecting my library in Calibre-Web (Windows 11 btw).

Apologies again, I am very much a novice at any kind of coding and working with this stuff is all quite new to me.

11

have you tried?

- M:/libraries/books/calibre:/books

or maybe

- "M:/libraries/books/calibre:/books"

try also to run

docker compose exec calibre-web ls -l /books

this should list the files if the mount was successful.

check also: Just installed docker desktop for windows , do not see many of the options like shared folder - #3 by alexk345
and: Docker -Cannot see option to Share Drives in Settings -Windows 10 Home · Issue #7199 · docker/for-win · GitHub