How can I mount a Block Storage Volume from inside my Docker container?

This goal can be accomplished on the Linode platform. If you haven't already, create a Block Storage Volume and mount it to your Linode: How to Use Block Storage with Your Linode

For my tests, I named my Block Storage Volume docker-bs-volume-test and mounted it to /mnt/docker-bs-volume-test on my Linode. I then ran the following command to start a container from the latest NGINX Docker image, bind the Block Storage Volume to my container, and execute bash within it (I didn't really need to use the NGINX image here; you could use any other image too):

nmelehan@localhost$ docker run -it \
>   --mount type=bind,source=/mnt/docker-bs-volume-test,target=/bs-volume-accessed-from-container \
>   nginx:latest \
>   bash

The bound Block Storage Volume showed up from inside the container as expected:

root@b937465aa209:/# ls /
bin   bs-volume-accessed-from-container  etc   lib    media  opt   root  sbin  sys  usr
boot  dev                 home  lib64  mnt    proc  run   srv   tmp  var

I then created a test file in that directory and exited the container:

root@b937465aa209:/# touch /bs-volume-accessed-from-container/testfile.txt
root@b937465aa209:/# exit

Back outside of the container, I could confirm that the file I created from inside the container was written to the Block Storage Volume:

nmelehan@localhost:~$ ls /mnt/docker-bs-volume-test/
lost+found  testfile.txt

Running the image again, detaching from it, and inspecting the container's mounts also shows that the Block Storage Volume is bound as expected:

nmelehan@localhost$ docker run -d \
>   --mount type=bind,source=/mnt/docker-bs-volume-test,target=/bs-volume-accessed-from-container \
>   nginx:latest \
>   tail -f /dev/null
6cb6d5a3ca8b73997636ef33e7c293be995fa0a28ff8d5b2d622257f1cd2361b
nmelehan@localhost:~$ docker inspect -f '{{ .Mounts }}' 6cb6d5a3ca8b
[{bind  /mnt/docker-bs-volume-test /bs-volume-accessed-from-container   true rprivate}]

You can use the linode volume driver: https://github.com/libgolang/docker-volume-linode

for full disclosure, I'm the author.

At the moment I there is no installation script, so these are the steps to get it running:

• Download and install golang https://golang.org/dl/
• Install the driver by running: go get -u github.com/libgolang/docker-volume-linode
• Run the driver in the background. Create an upstart or systemd script for easier management. The following command illustrates how to run it:

 $ docker-volume-linode -linode.token=<token> -linode.host=<linode-label> -linode.region=<region>

<token>: Linode API access token generated on linode console(cloud.linode.com)

<region>: The region where the linode host is running. Defaults to "us-west"

<linode-label>: the label of the linode host where the driver is runining. The label is not the actual hostname of the machine, but the label assigned on the linode console.