Persistent File System¶

Creating A Persistent File System¶

A filesystem service can be configured in your manifest.yml file:

services:
    mydata: filesystem

You can also run the stackato create-service command:

$ stackato create-service filesystem mydata
    Creating Service: OK

    $ stackato services

    =========== Provisioned Services ============

    +----------------+------------+
    | Name           | Service    |
    +----------------+------------+
    | mydata         | filesystem |
    +----------------+------------+

Using A Persistent File System¶

The filesystem service creates a path which your app can use to store and read files.

If there is only one filesystem service, the STACKATO_FILESYSTEM environment variable can be used to get the path.

If there is more than one filesystem service, STACKATO_FILESYSTEM is not available. Instead, a custom environment variable STACKATO_FILESYSTEM_* will be created based on the name of each filesystem service (with hyphens replaced by underscores).

For example, if your manifest.yml file configures the following services:

services:
    my-data: filesystem
    plugins: filesystem

Two environment variables would be created: STACKATO_FILESYSTEM_MY_DATA and STACKATO_FILESYSTEM_PLUGINS.

This naming scheme can be used in conjunction with the STACKATO_APP_NAME_UPCASE environment variable. For example, in an app with the following filesystem service defined:

services:
  ${name}-foo: filesystem
  ${name}-bar: filesystem

The filesystem mount point for the "foo" filesystem service can be accessed within the container using constructs such as:

FOO=STACKATO_FILESYSTEM_${STACKATO_APP_NAME_UPCASE}_FOO
mkdir ${!FOO}/myapp

Alternatively, STACKATO_SERVICES contains information for all services:

{
    "plugins": {
        "dir": "/home/stackato/fs/plugins"
            },
            "my-data": {
                    "dir": "/home/stackato/fs/my-data"
            },
            "mydb": {
                    "name": "db76e25bc8fc142858653a6cb8c643204",
                    "hostname": "192.168.0.112",
                    "host": "192.168.0.112",
                    "port": 3306,
                    "user": "u7Fjl8hdb4iNu",
                    "username": "u7Fjl8hdb4iNu",
                    "password": "p4XQAhZr8xfHg"
            }
    }

Because the environment variables are available during the staging process, it is possible to make use of them in the manifest.yml file to configure a filesystem service and create a symlink to it for use by the app. (see example below)

Example of Using A Persistent File System¶

You can customize a WordPress deployment to use a persistent file system. Before you begin, find out where all the user generated contents are saved. You may have to make modifications to this general approach if your application stores user generated content in more than one location. In WordPress, they are stored in the wp-content directory.

Add the following blocks to manifest.yml:

services:
    fs-wp: filesystem
hooks:
    post-staging:
    # create wp-content in the shared filesystem
    - mkdir -p "$STACKATO_FILESYSTEM"/wp-content

    # migrate existing wp-content data into the shared filesystem
    - mv wp-content/* "$STACKATO_FILESYSTEM"/wp-content

    # remove unused wp-content directories
    - rm -rf wp-content

    # link to wp-content directory in the shared filesystem
    - ln -s "$STACKATO_FILESYSTEM"/wp-content wp-content

mv: failed to preserve ownership for... Permission denied