[SOLVED] How to access files in host from a Docker Container?

Issue

I have a Docker Ubuntu bionic container on A Ubuntu server host. From the container I can see the host drive is mounted as /etc/hosts which is not a directory. Tried unmounting and remounting on a different location but throws permission denied error, this happens when I am trying as root. So How do you access the contents of your host system ?

Solution

Firstly, etc/hosts is a networking file present on all linux systems, it is not related to drives or docker.

Secondly, if you want to access part of the host filesystem inside a Docker container you need to use volumes. Using the -v flag in a docker run command you can specify a directory on the host to mount into the container, in the format:

-v /path/on/host:/path/inside/container

for example:

docker run -v /path/on/host:/path/inside/container <image_name>

Answered By - JShorthouse

Answer Checked By - David Goodson (WPSolving Volunteer)