Mapping /var/www/html to existing wp folder

[tubia]

Hi all,
I created a docker-compose file to make the images work taking an existing wordpress folder that is on my home.
Here is the docker-compose.yml

wordpress:
 image: wordpress
 links:
 - db:mysql
 ports:
 - 8082:80
 environment:
 WORDPRESS_DB_USER: test
 WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: test
 WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: test
 volumes:
 - /home/tubia/test/:/var/www/html

db:
 image: mysql
 environment:
 MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: example
 MYSQL_DATABASE: test
 MYSQL_USER: test
 MYSQL_PASSWORD: test

This results in the installation page, when I visit localhost:8082, so it is not taking the volume as configured. Also If I enter the container with docker exec -ti wp_container /bin/bash and ls the /var/www/html, it's a standard default wp installation, not the one I mapped with the volume.

Hints? It is the expected behaviour?

[yosifkit]

Does /home/tubia/test contain index.php and wp-includes/version.php? If those exist, then we do not try to copy the default wordpress source. If those do not exist and /var/www/html is not empty we do print a warning and sleep for 10 seconds (entrypoint.sh)

[tubia]

Hi @yosifkit thank for the explanation, now it's clear.
In fact, linking /home/tubia/test/wp-content with /var/www/html/wp-content works. I imagine the reason for this choice but what about, for example, a custom .htaccess ?
Actually I'm experiencing an issue related to the URL (I changed in the backend the siteURL from the IP to the current domain name). Yes, it's off-topic, but just to show that maybe with files in other directories there could be problems (or maybe I don't understand well the correct path).

[yosifkit]

You could use volumes for the single file /my/.htaccess:/var/www/html/. You should be able to use your full wordpress directory directly mounted into the container /var/www/html/ if your directory has all of the wordpress files like index.php and wp-includes/.

[pierreozoux]

@tubia did it solve your issue? If yes, can you close please? Thanks :)

[ailic]

You could use volumes for the single file /my/.htaccess:/var/www/html/.

@yosifkit I'm experiencing the problem with achieving what you've said. Like @tubia I have no problems with mounting folders, that works just fine. But when it's about files, no solution yet to make it work.

Here's my docker-compose.yml file:

web:
 image: wordpress
 ports:
 - "80:80"
 volumes:
 - ./src/wordpress/wp-content:/var/www/html/wp-content
 - ./src/wordpress/wp-config.php:/var/www/html/wp-config.php
 environment:
 WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: dummyname
 links:
 - db:mysql
db:
 image: mysql
 ports:
 - "3306:3306"
 volumes:
 - mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql
 environment:
 MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: dummypass

After docker-compose up (or even docker run command) I get an error:

WordPress not found in /var/www/html - copying now...
WARNING: /var/www/html is not empty - press Ctrl+C now if this is an error!
+ ls -A
wp-config.php
+ sleep 10
Complete! WordPress has been successfully copied to /var/www/html
sed: couldn't edit wp-config.php: not a regular file

With this line removed - ./src/wordpress/wp-config.php:/var/www/html/wp-config.php everything works fine.

[pierreozoux]

@ailic you should open an other issue.
In your specific case, if wp-config.php is not created before starting, docker (in previous version, it is no longer the case) would create a folder, and not a file. (Now, with latest version, you'll just get an error).

[jpswade]

I've been trying to get this to work using docker-compose in my existing Wordpress directory, but no matter what I seem to do, I always get this message:

WordPress not found in /var/www/html - copying now...

I suspect that, for whatever reason the default mapping to the working directory isn't working.

[tianon]

@jpswade can you share your docker-compose.yml contents?

[jpswade]

Sure...

https://gist.github.com/jpswade/b6af225e50fccbd0dce7cf054b13778d

[bfreeds]

Hi all,

I'm experiencing a similar issue here, regarding the mounted volume still bringing me to a fresh install page. Here are my details - please let me know if there's other info that would help replicate / understand what's going on here.

My directory structure:

• docker-compose.yml
• wordpress (complete backup of WP-Engine install)
  • ...
  • index.php
  • wp-config.php (has info to connect to ./wp-content/test_db.sql dump)
  • ...
  • wp-admin
  • wp-content
    • test_db.sql
    • ...
  • wp-includes
    • version.php
    • ...

docker-compose.yml looks like this:

version: '2' 
services: 
 db: 
 image: mysql:5.7
 # this will load existing database into mysql container on startup
 volumes:
 - ./wordpress/wp-content/test_db.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/test_db.sql
 environment: 
 MYSQL_DATABASE: [existing db name]
 MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: test
 container_name: mysql
 restart: always
 wordpress: 
 depends_on:
 - db
 image: wordpress:latest
 volumes:
 # mount the wordpress install into container
 - ./wordpress:/var/www/html
 environment:
 # get a message that this is required for connecting to mysql, but it seems to overwrite wp-config.php
 WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: test
 container_name: wordpress
 ports: 
 - 8080:80
 links:
 - db

My understanding (from this discussion) is that when the "wordpress" container initializes and sees that wordpress is included in the container's /var/www/html the container's initialization script should not use environment variables to connect to the database.

The issue I'm having is that the wordpress container does not locate the database that has been initialized in the Mysql container. What then happens is every time I go to localhost:8080 I'm presented with the dialogue for installing a fresh install of Wordpress.

I'm also noticing in the wordpress/wp-config.php, after docker-compose up these fields get overwritten from the existing exported settings to this:

define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
define( 'DB_USER', 'root');
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'test');
define( 'DB_HOST', 'mysql');

Thanks all in advance for helping figure this out - and the work being done on the official image. After I finally can get this working I'd be happy to submit a pull request with documentation for replicating an existing site through Docker (I've found this aspect here and on the mysql import process to be a little scattered).

[yosifkit]

@bfreeds, if you already have a wordpress install then there is nothing that the wordpress entrypoint gives you except the changing of your wp-config.php file based upon environment variables. Just add an entrypoint: apache2-foreground in the yaml to skip the default entrypoint script.

[bfreeds]

Thanks @yosifkit , that's a great tip, though I'm still having some connectivity issues between containers. Using the above docker-compose.yml file, adding entrypoint: apache2-foreground, I get a 500 internal server error when hitting localhost:8080.

If WordPress is mounted with a full install, how should the MySQL container be configured to appropriately connect to the WP container? What is the relationship between the MySQL environment variables set (MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_DATABASE) to the settings in wp-config.php? Does the MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD need to match define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'test');?

A more general question about instantiating an existing WordPress site - if one wanted to just use the containers to edit the site code, and keep that versioned but all the WordPress core .gitignore'd, what would be the approach?

Would it then be better to just include WP-Content and the backed up MySQL database in the volume mount? If so, what does this mean for the connection between the WordPress container and the MySQL Container (i.e. docker-compose environment variables, mysql users coming in from the backup, and the existing wp-config.php)?

Sorry if this is basic or redundant, I'm new to Docker and WordPress and trying to get a good understanding of how these things are working. Seems like there is a lack of understanding on this point in using this (#127 #134 #128 #120 ) - and I'm hoping to learn this to improve my own case, but also the documentation.

[yosifkit]

Yes, the config in the wp-config file needs to match the setup of your database. In the compose file above, you called the MySQL container db with a name of mysql; either value can be used as the DB_HOST value in wp-config. As for DB_NAME, DB_USER, and DB_PASSWORD, they need to be set so that the WordPress container can connect as a valid user in your MySQL database supplying a correct password and using the correct database name.

Editing site code for WordPress (like posts and pages), is not a simple task to backup and move to another place (since the siteurl used in links stored in the text is based upon the url that it is first accessed on), but there are wordpress plugins that could be useful.

[twelch555]

@brfeeds I'm also new to docker and am working on a similar type of setup. I do notice that your docker-compose file is version 2 but you don't have a primary level volume declaration. Version 2 of the docker-compose format introduced an evolved way of handling volumes and networks. I got stung by that looking at blogs and instructions written in the V1 docker-compose format.

The other thing you may find handy is the local-persist volume driver. I'm finding that it is smoothing out dealing with volumes generally.