Compose Relative Directories

When mounting data in a Compose YAML file, you can use a relative directory to specify the data mount directory. A relative directory is resolved from the directory containing the YAML file. Using relative directories makes it easier to manage Compose configuration and data together.

services:
  app:
    image: example/app
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data

Assume the project is named example and the YAML file is located at /home/compose/example/compose.yaml. Then ./data refers to the /home/compose/example/data directory beside the YAML file.

Mount /dpanel from a Host Directory

Assume that the host directory /home/dpanel is mounted to /dpanel when creating the DPanel container.

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You can also mount the Compose directory separately:

-v /home/dpanel:/dpanel
-v /home/compose:/dpanel/compose

docker run -d --name dpanel --restart=always \
 -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -p 8807:8080 -e APP_NAME=dpanel \
 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
 -v /home/dpanel:/dpanel dpanel/dpanel:latest 

In the example above, ./data is located at /dpanel/compose/example/data inside the DPanel container, corresponds to /home/dpanel/compose/example/data on the host, and is ultimately mounted at /data in the application container.

In other words, the actual location of a relative directory depends on which host directory the DPanel container's /dpanel or /dpanel/compose directory is mounted to.

Mount /dpanel Using a Docker Volume

Assume that the Docker volume dpanel-data is mounted to /dpanel when creating the DPanel container.

docker run -d --name dpanel --restart=always \
 -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -p 8807:8080 -e APP_NAME=dpanel \
 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
 -v dpanel-data:/dpanel dpanel/dpanel:latest 

If /dpanel is not mounted explicitly, or if -v dpanel-data:/dpanel is used, the directory is mounted as a Docker volume. Docker manages the contents of a volume and its mount internally.

Directories inside a volume cannot be used directly as host paths. Therefore, using ./data:/data cannot mount data from a relative directory. If you need to use project data inside the volume, declare dpanel-data as an external volume and use volume.subpath to specify the relative directory.

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subpath must be specified relative to the root of the Docker volume. The directory must already exist, must not begin with /, and volume.subpath requires Docker API 1.45 or newer.

services:
  app:
    image: example/app
    volumes:
      - type: volume
        source: dpanel-data
        target: /data
        volume:
          subpath: compose/example/data

volumes:
  dpanel-data:
    external: true

The configuration above mounts the compose/example/data subdirectory from the dpanel-data volume at /data in the application container.