DATA_DIR doesn't contain anything -- resulting data loss

[Madgvox]

Hi, I recently set up hoarder locally on my system to test it out. I noticed that even though I set DATA_DIR, it never populated the chosen directory with any files. I then had to factory reset my docker installation for unrelated reasons, and I appear to have inadvertently wiped my hoarder data. This leads me to believe that db.db is not properly being mounted from my computer's drive and instead only exists in the docker volume. Even after recreating hoarder, I'm still not seeing any files in the directory. I did a full disk scan for db.db just in case and can confirm it doesn't exist on my computer's file system. I can see db.db in docker desktop in the hoarder_data volume, however.

I followed the Docker Compose instructions for getting started, and ran docker compose up -d in the directory with both the .env and docker-compose.yml files. I haven't noticed any errors or anything to indicate there's something wrong with the installation.

Versions:
M1 / macOS 14.5
hoarder 0.21.0
docker 27.4.1

[MohamedBassem]

you shouldn't touch the DATA_DIR variable. You almost never want to change it.

What you want to change is what gets mounted to that dir.

In the default compose file, it says mount the volume "data" to /data. If you want to mount a custom path on disk, don't use a docker volume and instead add the path of your folder under the "volume" field in the docker compose.

[MohamedBassem]

the data dir basically points to the directory inside the container, not on your host machine.

[Madgvox]

you shouldn't touch the DATA_DIR variable. You almost never want to change it.

I set it once when initially configuring the application and haven't touched it since. The language in the documentation lead me to understand I was to set it in order to create a directory where hoarder data lives (it is both required and "not set").

I had a specific place I wanted the data to live (I set it to /Users/Madgvox/.hoarder/data, a directory I created before starting Hoarder for the first time). I didn't touch any mounting configuration, just set DATA_DIR in the .env file. Something I thought I was supposed to do?

[Madgvox]

I think I understand what you're saying. The language in the configuration guide is unclear, then. It lead me to believe that the DATA_DIR was something for me to set, and would determine where it would live on the host volume. This makes sense to me since containers/volumes are generally ephemeral in nature.

I understand the intent behind hoarder is to host it on a self-hosted server (I just hadn't gotten there yet). But maybe some clarification of the language would be helpful to highlight that DATA_DIR is not a local path.

[MohamedBassem]

I can see how the documentation can be misleading, I'll fix that, sorry for the hassle.

What you want to do is:

Revert back DATA_DIR to be '/data' and change the line that says:

data:/data

to be

/Users/Madgvox/.hoarder/data:/data

Once you do that and do docker compose up, you should see the db.db appear

[Madgvox]

Yep, thanks for the quick resolve, and thanks for clarifying the documentation. All in all I didn't lose too much, so not a huge hassle. I'm glad it happened now and not later!

[apricot13]

I came across this issue too, I wasn't paying attention when I copied the docker compose file!

I had the message Cannot open database because the directory does not exist in my logs - leaving this here so if anyone else has this issue they come across this thread!

[NeoMod]

Just encountered the same issue, but weirdly enough my google-fu didn't bring me here. Instead, I landed on the quite unrelated #580 where two more users encountered the same issue. I left a comment there in case someone else misses this discussion and encounters the issue before the mantainer has a chance to fix the documentation