How to list the content of a named volume in docker 1.9+?

Question

Docker 1.9 added named volumes, so I..

docker volume create --name postgres-data  docker volume ls  

and I get

local               postgres-data 

all good so far..

so how do I see what is in the named volume? Is there a way to cd to it on the host system. Like I can for a mounted host directory?

Answer 1

docker run --rm -i -v=postgres-data:/tmp/myvolume busybox find /tmp/myvolume 

Explanation: Create a minimal container with tools to see the volume's files (busybox), mount the named volume on a container's directory (v=postgres-data:/tmp/myvolume), list the volume's files (find /tmp/myvolume). Remove the container when the listing is done (--rm).

Answer 2

you can run docker volume inspect postgres-data

and see Mountpoint section of the result

therefore source parameter will point to host directory maybe /var/lib/docker/volumes/[volume_name]/_data directory