Exposing a directory on the host machine to an LXC container
5 March, 2021 by
Exposing a directory on the host machine to an LXC container
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  1. Log into the container and create an empty directory, this will be the mount point
  2. Log out and stop the container.
  3. Open to your container’s config file
    • For regular LXC containers: /var/lib/lxc/mycontainer/config
    • For unprivileged LXC containers: $HOME/.local/share/lxc/mycontainer/config
  4. Add a new line above the lxc.mount directive, that follows the format below. Substitute proper paths as necessary:
    • lxc.mount.entry = /path/to/folder/on/host /path/to/mount/point none bind 0 0
    • Both of these paths are relative to the host machine.
    • Location of the root fs in the container can be found at:
      • For regular LXC containers: /var/lib/lxc/mycontainer/rootfs/
      • For unprivileged LXC containers: $HOME/.local/share/lxc/mycontainer/rootfs

Note: If the host’s user does not exist in the container, the container will still be mounted, but with nobody:nogroup as the owner. This may not be a problem unless you need to write to these files, in which case you’ll need to give everybody write permission to that folder. (i.e. chmod -R go+w /folder/to/share)

Example

I want to share /home/julianlam/foobar to my unprivileged container bazquux. In bazquux, I want this folder to be found at /mnt/baz.

In the container:

$ cd /mnt
$ sudo mkdir baz
$ logout

In the host, I will add the following line above lxc-mount in /home/julianlam/.local/share/lxc/bazquux/config:

lxc.mount.entry = /home/julianlam/foobar /home/julian/.local/share/lxc/bazquux/rootfs/mnt/baz none bind 0 0

Then

$ lxc-start -n bazquux -d

Further Reading

 

If the host’s user does not exist in the container, the container will still be mounted, but with nobody:nogroup” I have the exact same problem. Can you please elaborate how to get past this issue?

 

# LXC
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