Docker Machine + Docker Compose + Volumes on Ubuntu

Question

So i have beeen using docker-compose in development for a while now on my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS host machine with a local VirtualBox provider (boot2docker inside it).

Only recently i decided to try out docker-machine (because of the integration with Pycharm) but i am running into some issues like for example when i save some new code the docker container is not updated automatically anymore and i think its because i commented out my volumes in my docker-compose.yml web service but if i don't i will get a manage.py not found error so i understood in this here that i should comment it instead.

I have been reading lots of things on the internet and i would like to know if there is a good and simple approach to get docker-machine playing nicely with docker-compose on Ubuntu.

DockerFile

FROM ubuntu:14.04.3
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED 1
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
  build-essential \
  git-core \
  python2.7 \
  python-pip \
  python-dev \
  libpq-dev \
  postgresql-client-9.3 \
  libjpeg-dev \
  binutils \
  libproj-dev \
  gdal-bin
RUN mkdir /vagrant
WORKDIR /vagrant
RUN mkdir requirements
COPY requirements requirements
RUN pip install -r requirements/local.txt
COPY . /vagrant/

docker-compose.yml

postgis:
  image: mdillon/postgis:9.3
  ports:
    - "5432:5432"
  environment:
    POSTGRES_USER: postgres
    POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "postgres"
#  volumes:
#    - /etc/postgresql
#    - /var/log/postgresql
#    - /var/lib/postgresql

web:
  build: .
  dockerfile: Dockerfile
  command: python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 --settings=xxx.settings.local
#   https://stackoverflow.com/a/31567743/977622
#  volumes:
#    - .:/vagrant
  ports:
    - "8000:8000"
  links:
    - "postgis:postgis"

UPDATE:

when i run the mount command inside my vm i get:

tmpfs on / type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=918096k)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1 type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,relatime,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu type cgroup (rw,relatime,cpu)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuacct type cgroup (rw,relatime,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,relatime,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,relatime,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls type cgroup (rw,relatime,net_cls)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,relatime,perf_event)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_prio type cgroup (rw,relatime,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb type cgroup (rw,relatime,hugetlb)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/aufs type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
none on /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/aufs/mnt/137fb1ad9a432a3f4fa47667ecc9991c10149b71f02dfc06a8134fc348532a3d type aufs (rw,relatime,si=462e07a762a4065f,dio,dirperm1)
shm on /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/containers/137fb1ad9a432a3f4fa47667ecc9991c10149b71f02dfc06a8134fc348532a3d/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=65536k)
mqueue on /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/containers/137fb1ad9a432a3f4fa47667ecc9991c10149b71f02dfc06a8134fc348532a3d/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
nsfs on /var/run/docker/netns/2e4dbeed7a66 type nsfs (rw)

My shared folders say in the UI that the folder path is /home

Answer 1

Unfortunately, your safest (and most compatible) bet is going to be to re-build the image and re-deploy the container for each change you make (ie, docker-compose build && docker-compose up -d or similar). This has the nice benefit of also working against remote Docker daemons (which as you explore docker-machine's features might become more tempting since they're so easy to use).

Answer 2

@AndyShinn's comment / @tianon's responses answer the question I believe.

However, if you are running an Ubuntu host, you might try running on bare metal, rather than in a VM. These days you can run docker containers as non-root via the --userns-remap flag, so you can be a little less concerned about security. You're in a unique position, because even though most tutorials and things list a docker-machine VM as a prerequisite, their target audience is mostly folks on OS X or Windows who cannot run docker without a VM. Don't loose sight of the trees for the forest--hypervisors (especially Virtualbox) == bad IO performance, excess memory usage, and slower startup. That's why we have docker :)