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linuxkit/docs/external-disk.md
Justin Cormack 298f4aab32 Consistently don't use quotes around image names
These are not needed, but we are inconsistent. Been waiting for a
quiet moment to fix this since I noticed while doing a presentation...

Signed-off-by: Justin Cormack <justin.cormack@docker.com>
2017-07-09 17:47:30 +01:00

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# External Disk
`linuxkit run` has the ability to mount an external disk when booting. It involves two steps:
1. Make the disk available as a device
2. Mount the disk
## Make Disk Available
In order to make the disk available, you need to tell `linuxkit` where the disk file or block device is.
All local `linuxkit run` methods (currently `hyperkit`, `qemu`, and `vmware`) take a `-disk` argument:
* `-disk path,size=100M,format=qcow2`. For size the default is in GB but an `M` can be appended to specify sizes in MB. The format can be omitted for the platform default, and is only useful on `qemu` at present.
If a _path_ is specified `linuxkit` will use the disk at location _path_. If you do not provide `-disk ` _path_, `linuxkit` assumes a default path, which is _prefix_`-state/disk.img`.
If the disk at the specified or default _path_ does not exist, `linuxkit` will create one of size _size_.
The `-disk` specification may be repeated for multiple disks, although a limited number may be supported, and some platforms currently only support a single disk.
**TODO:** GCP
## Mount the Disk
A disk created or used via `hyperkit run` will be available inside the image at `/dev/vda` with the first partition at `/dev/vda1`.
In order to use the disk, you need to do several steps to make it available:
1. Create a partition table if it does not have one.
2. Create a filesystem if it does not have one.
3. `fsck` the filesystem.
4. Mount it.
To simplify the process, two `onboot` images are available for you to use:
1. `format`, which:
* checks for a partition table and creates one if necessary
* checks for a filesystem on the partition and creates one if necessary
* runs `fsck` on the filesystem
2. `mount` which mounts the filesystem to a provided path
```yml
onboot:
- name: format
image: linuxkit/format:84a997e69051a1bf05b7c1926ab785bb07932954
- name: mount
image: linuxkit/mount:b24bd97ae43397b469dbaadd80f17f291c817bdf
command: ["/mount.sh", "/var/external"]
```
Notice several key points:
1. format container
* The format container needs to have bind mounts for `/dev`
* The format container needs `CAP_SYS_ADMIN` and `CAP_MKNOD` capabilities
* The format container only needs to run **once**, not matter how many external disks or partitions are provided. It finds all block devices under `/dev` and processes them.
* The default container config should be sufficient
2. mount container
* The mount container `command` is `mount.sh` followed by the desired mount point. Remember that nearly everything in a linuxkit image is read-only except under `/var`, so mount it there.
* The mount container needs to have bind mounts for `/dev` and `/var`
* The mount container needs `CAP_SYS_ADMIN` capabilities
* The mount container needs `rootfsPropagation: shared`
* The default container config should be sufficient, though the `mount.sh` command needs to be specified
With the above in place, if run with the current disk options, the image will make the external disk available as `/dev/vda1` and mount it at `/var/external`.