Inotify on shared drives does not work

[DeltaWhy]

I'm using docker-compose to run a Node.js application with nodemon. The application source is on the Windows host and mounted on the container so that I can make changes without rebuilding. However, nodemon does not pick up file changes. If I exec a shell inside the container and touch one of the files from there, nodemon picks it up and restarts the app, but any changes from Windows don't seem to trigger the inotify events.

[friism]

@DeltaWhy thanks, this is a known limitation that we're trying to figure out how to address.

nodemon has a fallback polling mode that I recommend you try: https://github.com/remy/nodemon#application-isnt-restarting

@londoncalling I checked the FAQ, and it looks like we don't have a mention that inotify doesn't work on Windows - it might be good to add.

[londoncalling]

@friism adding it now to the FAQs

[rn]

@DeltaWhy We are using SMB for the file sharing and the Linux SMB implementation does not support change notifications. We have update the FAQ accordingly andI'm closing this issues.
Thanks for reporting

[garveen]

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_3.0_Features_added/changed

Samba 3.0.25:

New file change notify subsystem which is able to make use of inotify on Linux.

[rn]

@garveen unfortunately, the linux kernel implementation of SMB (in ./fs/cifs) does not support inotify. There are various comments in the code that the older dnotify once was supported (and it is marked as experimental) but none of the code calls into the fsnotify API.

UPDATE: I think the above refers to the Linux SMB server being able to generate SMB change notification from inotify events. The opposite direction is what is needed by Docker for Windows: SMB change notifications generated by the server on the host need to be translated into the events on Linux

[garveen]

@rneugeba maybe other than smb:

If we have a tool that listen on native Windows' file system APIs, communicate with MobyLinux and generate Linux events, it would be great.

Does this idea practicable?

[DeltaWhy]

I assume Hyper-V doesn't have anything akin to VirtualBox shared folders? Inotify works great with Docker Toolbox as well as Vagrant.

[rn]

@DeltaWhy I haven't seen anything in the VBox source suggesting they support inotify on the shared folders, but I may have looked at the wrong place, but there seems plenty of evidence on the web that it doesn't, like for example: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10660?cversion=0&cnum_hist=1

[kidlj]

@rneugeba @friism
Vagrant can make bi-directional file changes synchronization between Windows host and Linux guest machines. And Vagrant takes several ways to achieve this:

SMB: https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/synced-folders/smb.html
RSync: https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/synced-folders/rsync.html
Virtualbox shared folders: https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/synced-folders/virtualbox.html

Hope you can get some inspirations from there! Thank you D4W developers.

[friism]

@kidlj yes, moving files and file changes back and forth works fine (as it does with Docker for Windows), but the inotify change notifications are not, and not with any of those solutions that you linked to either, at least not that I know of. Do you have an example of inotify working with either SMB, RSync or vbox shared folders?

[kidlj]

@friism Thank you for the explanation. I thought inotify was the same as file changes synchronization, but now I get it.

I just found a vagrant solution for the same inotify issue, could it help?
https://github.com/adrienkohlbecker/vagrant-fsnotify

[friism]

@kidlj I don't think it works for Windows, but might be an interesting model. Maybe @rneugeba has thoughts.

[DeltaWhy]

I guess I was mistaken. It looks like mocha --watch works on both (I guess it's using polling) and nodemon doesn't by default, which is maybe why I got confused.

Rsync with rsync-auto should trigger inotify events since it's touching files on the Linux native FS, right? But that probably won't work for sharing a whole drive 😉

Vagrant-fsnotify looks very interesting but I wonder if that approach would also have performance issues when sharing a whole drive. You might need a Linux kernel module to tell what's being watched on the CIFS mount so the host side can watch those same things rather than the whole drive.

[blaggacao]

This hurts too much for beeing closed.

[frankgreco]

Why is this issue closed? I want to use Docker Native for local development across my entire organization but can't util inotify works for windows as well. I don't want to use polling because I want seamless integration between windows/mac code bases and don't want to change my webpack config files for example to use polling if you have a windows machine.

Is there someplace for this feature/enhancement can be tracked so I know that status of it.

[blaggacao]

I guess strategic bets are to wait for windows linux subsystem. But some cracky C# person wouldn't be that limited as most of us to fix this in upstream samba quickly.

[frankgreco]

It would be nice if there was a Docker Native backlog that I could refer to so that I know when Docker is planning on address this (they say they will eventually as they want Docker for Mac/Windows to be the same). That way, I'd have an idea on when I can plan on having this implemented in my organization.

[friism]

[..] C# person wouldn't be that limited as most of us to fix this in upstream samba quickly

@blaggacao Samba is implemented in C: https://github.com/samba-team/samba

[asolopovas]

It looks like issue is so difficult to implement that developers don't even want to talk about it, that's why it gets closed without even discussing it.

[rn]

@asolopovas

• To implement this correctly with SMB/CIFS requires significant changes to the generic Linux Virtual Filesystem layer, not just improvements to the Linux Kernel SMB implementation.
• Another option is to go the route we have taken with Docker for Mac, which uses a user-space file system (FUSE) in Linux and then passes this to a daemon on the host which implements the requires semantics. This requires mapping of Linux filesystem semantics (including users, permissions, symlinks, inotify etc) to NTFS filesystem semantics. The filesystems are very different and it's not possible in all cases to map the semantics. WSL helps a little bit, but it too has mis-matched semantics.
• The other "solutions" mentioned in this thread all seem like hacks which come with fairly big caveats, so they may work in one case but maybe problematic in others.

[frankgreco]

@rneugeba Is Docker planning on implementing this? Here is says, "Currently, inotify does not work on Docker for Windows. This will become evident, for example, when an application needs to read/write to a container across a mounted drive. This is a known issue that the team is working on."

Is there an estimated time for this functionality being available? Or, is there somewhere on the Docker Github where future/current work like this is officially proposed/tracked?

[friism]

@frankgreco I've sent a PR to update the docs. As @rneugeba pointed out, we don't have a lot of good options at the moment. We're aware that this is an annoying limitation, and we're continuously evaluating progress in WSL and Samba to see what improvements we might incorporate.

@frankgreco @asolopovas what programming framework are you using? Does it not have a polling mode for looking for filesystem changes, similar to nodemon?

[asolopovas]

@friism I am using browsersync haven't found any polling modes in it but was searching for. I know that webpack has it but I use combination of browsersync with webpack and hot module reload and it does not seem to work if I enable poling just in webpack. I simply installed all necessary tools on my host so that I can operate looks like we just have to be a bit more patient.

[trodrigues]

I know +1s in issue comments don't help but I'd just like to add my voice here and say this is an issue that I also care about very much and would love to see it addressed in the future. In fact, I found this issue here today because I saw this was an issue a few months ago and decided to come back and look for what the current status of this situation was.

[Lukortech]

Hello everyone!
I am writing here since there was no better place yet to be found.
I am using Win10.pro with Docker, but it seems that there are no changes seen by webpack too, and I don't understand why won't my front-end env. refresh after changes to the .ts files of any sort.

I've looked for any kind of help and it al lbrought me here. Waiting for an update. Hopefully windows users won't be second-class citiziens soon.

[wintercounter]

Most probably nothing is going to happen to fix this because WSL2 will completely get rid of such issues. Until then you can use docker-windows-notifier (or such tools out there) to "polyfill" fs events.

…

On Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 22:23 Lukortech ***@***.***> wrote: Hello everyone! I am writing here since there was no better place yet to be found. I am using Win10.pro with Docker, but it seems that there are no changes seen by webpack too, and I don't understand why won't my front-end env. refresh after changes to the .ts files of any sort. I've looked for any kind of help and it al lbrought me here. Waiting for an update. Hopefully windows users won't be second-class citiziens soon. — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#56?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAHLJQCPHHCKOTA65CDNEVDQFL6LJA5CNFSM4CNP5DY2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOD4UFYMA#issuecomment-522738736>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAHLJQGVA3FVMDVWY6ZY6OLQFL6LJANCNFSM4CNP5DYQ> .

[PieterScheffers]

Docker already has a Tech preview out. https://blog.docker.com/2019/07/docker-wsl2-tech-preview/

[mastacheata]

Does anyone yet have any results with Docker Desktop Community 2.1.6.0/2.1.6.1 which should've fixed this problem?
I tried, but without any success.
Quite the opposite, actually. It seems that the container is now unaware of inotify events inside it's own filesystem as well and no longer just forgets to broadcast the events to the containers. (volume watcher tools as well as touching/chmoding a file from docker exec seem to have no effect on either python or node's file-watchers. :(

[djs55]

@mastacheata thanks for your port. Could you try the following on the latest edge release:

• create a directory for testing
• share the directory with docker run -it -v <path>:/foo djs55/inotify-event --dir /foo
• create a subdirectory on the host inside the testing directory

If the inotify event injection is working then you should see events inside the docker run like this:

watch=1 cookie=0 events=CREATE "foo"

Here's a screen capture of it working locally for me: https://youtu.be/M6lpN65yF38

[scottkurz]

@djs55 thx for the instructions... I tried your inotify-event image with the edge Docker Desktop v2.1.6.1 and saw nothing happened when creating a subdir from the host with PS, Win Explorer, etc. Would be happy to try something else.

[mastacheata]

Same here (Docker Desktop 2.1.6.1 Build 40900, Docker Engine 19.03.5):

λ  docker run -it -v C:\Users\benedikt\foo:/foo djs55/inotify-event --dir /foo
Unable to find image 'djs55/inotify-event:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from djs55/inotify-event
7622164d525b: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:ce5540b724b37808d8933f80cf393e07bcb0a9e865891aa4e75786d8b316f67c
Status: Downloaded newer image for djs55/inotify-event:latest

And that's it. No more output from the container after that when creating directories inside the mounted directory.

https://youtu.be/PI-u1YO3pfY

[francescobianco]

@DeltaWhy @friism @scottkurz My solution is create a clone of INOTIFYWAIT full bash based on polling using a diff screenshot of filesystem, please take a look and support it work perfect on WINDOWS systems
https://github.com/javanile/inotifywait-polling

[mastacheata]

@DeltaWhy @friism @scottkurz My solution is create a clone of INOTIFYWAIT full bash based on polling using a diff screenshot of filesystem, please take a look and support it work perfect on WINDOWS systems
https://github.com/javanile/inotifywait-polling

Well, there are already 4-5 different versions of that. They all have downsides like not being able to transfer permission changes back and forth.

Docker Desktop on WSL2 officially supports inotify events on mounted volumes. It's just not working for me or @scottkurz ☹️

[scottkurz]

To clarify I'm not using WSL2 (or WSL).

[mastacheata]

To clarify I'm not using WSL2 (or WSL).

Well, than nothing is supposed to change. The inotify fix was only announced for docker running in WSL2 mode.

[francescobianco]

@mastacheata please could you link example of this

Well, there are already 4-5 different versions of that.

[djs55]

The latest edge release of Docker Desktop (2.1.7.0) should have better support for inotify on shared drives (in regular Linux mode, not WSL2) -- It's worth trying if you have the time. There is a known bug when used with docker-compose, see #5318 (comment) for a workaround.

[mastacheata]

@mastacheata please could you link example of this

Well, there are already 4-5 different versions of that.

• https://github.com/merofeev/docker-windows-volume-watcher

• https://github.com/FrodeHus/docker-windows-volume-watcher

And of course all the forks of each.
They basically watch Windows for changes and then change the permissions using docker exec of those files that changed in order to trigger a proper inotify event without changing the dates of the file (previous tooling used to do this by issueing a touch command inside the container, which would cause unwanted side effects)

[kamko]

The support for inotify that @djs55 mentioned in edge release is now in latest (2.2.0.0) stable release

Docker Desktop now supports inotify events on shared filesystems.
https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/release-notes/#docker-desktop-community-2200

[djs55]

I hope the inotify support works for you!

If not, please repro the problem (e.g. change a file on the host), capture a diagnostics and make a fresh ticket.

[madacol]

How lucky of me!!!
I encounter this bug today and hours later its fixed with the update.

I had the same problem as OP.
A NodeJs app with nodemon, using docker-compose

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