virtiofs breaks initial startup of Postgres container

[TylerADavis]

• I have tried with the latest version of Docker Desktop
• I have tried disabling enabled experimental features
• I have uploaded Diagnostics
• Diagnostics ID: DE42E1FF-5DD7-437F-9D40-847D8862DBE5/20220408200124

Expected behavior

Enabling VirtioFS and Big Sur Virtualization framework does not cause changes in container behavior outside of speed.

Actual behavior

Program in container fails to start successfully when it depends on files mounted in shared volume. PostgreSQL complains LOG: could not open file "pg_wal/000000010000000000000001": No such file or directory and FATAL: could not open file "pg_wal/000000010000000000000001": No such file or directory. Disabling virtiofs and experimental virtualization framework allows the container to start without issue.

Information

• macOS Version: macOS 12.3.1
• Intel chip or Apple chip: Apple M1 Pro
• Docker Desktop Version: 4.6.1

This may be a duplicate of #6219 or #6243, but I am not sure. I am trying to run a Postgres container using docker-compose up Postgres, with this docker-compose file. This service is set to mount postgresql's data to the host's ./data/postgres directory, enabling data persistence. When I run the container in a fresh directory without virtiofs and new virtualization framework, it starts just fine. However, if I try to start it from scratch with virtiofs enabled, it fails to start with the message above. I assume virtiofs is interfering with how long it takes for items to show up and be accessible once created. Please let me know if there is any additional information I can provide.

Output of /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/com.docker.diagnose check

❯ /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/com.docker.diagnose check
Starting diagnostics

[PASS] DD0027: is there available disk space on the host?
[PASS] DD0028: is there available VM disk space?
[PASS] DD0031: does the Docker API work?
[PASS] DD0004: is the Docker engine running?
[PASS] DD0011: are the LinuxKit services running?
[PASS] DD0016: is the LinuxKit VM running?
[PASS] DD0001: is the application running?
[PASS] DD0018: does the host support virtualization?
[PASS] DD0017: can a VM be started?
[PASS] DD0015: are the binary symlinks installed?
[PASS] DD0003: is the Docker CLI working?
[PASS] DD0013: is the $PATH ok?
[PASS] DD0007: is the backend responding?
[PASS] DD0014: are the backend processes running?
[PASS] DD0008: is the native API responding?
[PASS] DD0009: is the vpnkit API responding?
[PASS] DD0010: is the Docker API proxy responding?
[PASS] DD0012: is the VM networking working?
[PASS] DD0032: do Docker networks overlap with host IPs?
[SKIP] DD0030: is the image access management authorized?
[PASS] DD0019: is the com.docker.vmnetd process responding?
[PASS] DD0033: does the host have Internet access?

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Enable virtiofs
2. mkdir ~/cs143
3. cd ~/cs143
4. mkdir ~/cs143_shared
5. wget curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/TylerADavis/d1fb104553740bd6b48ea2bdadd6a59d/raw/adcf9d667d5a0c9a51a243be609644d46007a546/docker-compose.yml > docker-compose.yml
6. docker-compose up Postgres
7. Observe error message
8. Disable virtiofs
9. observe that docker-compose up postgres runs without issue

[TylerADavis]

Just realized that 4.7.0 was realized yesterday. I have updated Docker desktop and confirm that this issue persists.

[TylerADavis]

I've confirmed that enabling VirtioFS is what causes the error here. The Big Sur virtualization framework on its own is not enough to cause the failure.

[Atomzwieback]

Can confirm. But this staging release mentioned here seems to fix it: docker/roadmap#7 (comment)

[OgulcanCelik]

I also have this problem and latest build does not seem to fix this.

[OgulcanCelik]

This can be fixed by PGDATA env variable mentioned on:
docker-library/postgres#435 (comment)

Also I was mounting /var/lib/postgresql/pgdata but changed it to one dir above to /var/lib/postgresql

version: '3'
services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres
    restart: on-failure
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password
      - PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata
      - POSTGRES_DB=postgres
    volumes:
      - ./postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql
    ports:
      - 5432:5432

[WD-Mauro]

This can be fixed by PGDATA env variable mentioned on: docker-library/postgres#435 (comment)

Also I was mounting /var/lib/postgresql/pgdata but changed it to one dir above to /var/lib/postgresql

version: '3'
services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres
    restart: on-failure
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password
      - PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata
      - POSTGRES_DB=postgres
    volumes:
      - ./postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql
    ports:
      - 5432:5432

Hi,
I tried this method. But when I list "postgres_data", I find an empty "pgdata" folder.
And if I try to stop, destroy & recreate my container, it's empty

Does someone obtain this behavior?

Thanks

[haxoza]

I had the same issue.

@OgulcanCelik's suggestion did the trick. In my case I changed

    volumes:
      - ./db/.pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

to

    volumes:
      - ./db/.pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql

and it started working.

[robcast]

I had the same problem with Docker Desktop for Mac 4.7.0 and the postgres:11.7 container:

• startup of postgres fails with "could not open file" when mounting /var/lib/postgresql/data in the container to a host directory
• the error only occurs with VirtioFS
• the error only occurs on initial start when the volume is empty, the container works fine when the database has already been initialized (there was data corruption later, I think writing to an existing database does not work)
• the initial error does not occur when mounting /var/lib/postgresql in the container to the host as @OgulcanCelik suggested, but the contents of the data directory /var/lib/postgresql/data are not saved in the host filesystem

It seems that VirtioFS has a bug with some filesystem operations in the initialization script of Postgres.

[Miha-ha]

The same on Docker Desktop for Mac 4.7.1 with postgres:14-alpine

[phasath]

I have the same issue with Docker Desktop for Mac 4.7.1 with postgres:11-alpine =S

[tunecrew]

Still having this issue with Docker Desktop for Mac 4.8.0, MacOS 12.3.1 (M1), postgres 13.6-bullseye image when initialising a new database.

The db section of my compose file includes:

environment:
  - PGDATA=/data/pgdata
volumes:
  - ./data:/data

Tried various permutations on the (sub)directories with same result.

[barrenechea]

Same on Docker Desktop for Mac 4.8.1 😞

[tunecrew]

MacOS 12.4 resolves this for me - although VirtioFS seems to be killing my inter-container communications afterwards, so it is still a no-go.