# Run Dokku on External Volume

In order to leverage cloud-provider facilities like _attachable volumes_, (_a.k.a. block storage_)
the following is an easy tutorial to achieve Dokku runs on them.

> Warning: If the block storage is not available and attached on boot it is possible that containers will not correctly start. Please keep this in mind when considering moving Dokku and/or Docker to network attached storage.

## Tutorial

The following is intended to be executed on the dokku host machine as `root`.
Say, _for instance_, that our volume is mapped into the systems as `/dev/vdb1`.

Stop docker daemon

```shell
systemctl stop docker
```

Prepare the filesystem:

```shell
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/vdb1
mkdir /mnt/volume
mount /dev/vdb1 /mnt/volume
```

Move the old data directories:

```shell
mv /home/dokku /home/dokku.OLD
mv /var/lib/docker /var/lib/docker.OLD
mv /var/lib/dokku /var/lib/dokku.OLD
```

Move the data on the volume

```shell
mkdir /mnt/volume/home/
mkdir -p /mnt/volume/var/lib/
mv /home/dokku.OLD /mnt/volume/home/dokku
mv /var/lib/dokku.OLD /mnt/volume/var/lib/dokku
mv /var/lib/docker.OLD /mnt/volume/var/lib/docker
```

Prepare the mountpoints

```shell
mkdir /home/dokku
mkdir /var/lib/dokku
mkdir /var/lib/docker
chown dokku:dokku /home/dokku   # respect the original ownership
chmod 711 /var/lib/docker       # respect the original permissions
```

Mount bind

```shell
mount -o bind /mnt/volume/home/dokku /home/dokku
mount -o bind /mnt/volume/var/lib/dokku /var/lib/dokku
mount -o bind /mnt/volume/var/lib/docker /var/lib/docker
```

Start docker daemon

```shell
systemctl start docker
```

At this point all should be working fine, please check it out.

Then, let the changes be reboot-persistent

```shell
echo '/dev/vdb1 /mnt/volume ext4 defaults 0 2' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
echo '/mnt/volume/home/dokku /home/dokku none defaults,bind 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
echo '/mnt/volume/var/lib/dokku /var/lib/dokku none defaults,bind 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
echo '/mnt/volume/var/lib/docker /var/lib/docker none defaults,bind 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
```
