Persisting plugins on the docker host

Hello, I’m running etherpad-lite through docker (17.05.0-ce, build 89658b). It works well, but when I restart the container, plugins which were installed through the admin interface are lost.

I thought it would only require bind-mounting the plugin folders to the docker host, but the symlink (ep_etherpad-lite -> ../src) located in /opt/etherpad-lite/node_modules does not seem to survive the mounting — even if the file paths of the container are mimicked on the host like below.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

version: '3.4'

services:
  etherpad:
    build: .
    container_name: etherpad
    networks:
      - my-network
    volumes:
      - ./settings.json:/opt/etherpad-lite/settings.json:ro
      - /opt/etherpad-lite/var:/opt/etherpad-lite/var
      - /opt/etherpad-lite/node_modules:/opt/etherpad-lite/node_modules
      - /opt/etherpad-lite/src:/opt/etherpad-lite/src
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production

networks:
  my-network:
    external:
      name: ${DOCKER_NETWORK}

The container throws the following error upon startup:

internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:651
    throw err;
    ^

Error: Cannot find module '/opt/etherpad-lite/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:649:15)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:575:25)
    at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:862:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:21:11

[pecuchet]

Hi @muxator, I ended up choosing a more righteous path and steering my soul clear of devilish security torments… This is simply what I did:

FROM etherpad/etherpad:latest
RUN npm i ep_mypads

Of course it doesn’t solve the problem of plugins installed at run-time. But it could be an idea to give the possibility to install plugins through a built-time argument (docker build --build-arg and a default Dockerfile ARG). This way, all what pertains to the software resides in the image, which adheres to Docker’s concept of images and containers.

[stale[bot]]

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