In general, on bare-metal, I mount below /mnt. For a long time, I just mounted in from pre-setup host mounts. But, I use Kubernetes, and you can directly specify a NFS mount. So, I eventually migrated everything to that as I made other updates. I don’t think it’s horrible to mount from the host, but if docker-compose supports directly defining an NFS volume, that’s one less thing to set up if you need to re-provision your docker host.

(quick edit) I don’t think docker compose reads and re-reads compose files. They’re read when you invoke docker compose but that’s it. So…

If you’re simply invoking docker compose to interact with things, then I’d say store the compose files where ever makes the most sense for your process. Maybe think about setting up a specific directory on your NFS share and mount that to your docker host(s). I would also consider version controlling your compose files. If you’re concerned about secrets, store them in encrypted env files. Something like SOPS can help with this.

As long as the user invoking docker compose can read the compose files, you’re good. When it comes to mounting data into containers from NFS… yes permissions will matter and it might be a pain as it depends on how flexible the container you’re using is in terms of user and filesystem permissions.

Docker’s documentation for supported backing filesystems for container filesystems.

In general, you should be considering your container root filesystems as completely ephemeral. But, you will generally want low latency and local. If you move most of your data to NFS, you can hopefully just keep a minimal local disk for images/containers.

As for your data volumes, it’s likely going to be very application specific. I’ve got Postgres databases running off remote NFS, that are totally happy. I don’t fully understand why Plex struggles to run it’s Database/Config dir from NFS. Disappointingly, I generally have to host it on a filesystem and disk local to my docker host.

In general, container root filesystems and the images backing them will not function on NFS. When deploying containers, you should be mounting data volumes into the containers rather than storing things on the container root filesystems. Hopefully you are already doing that, otherwise you’re going to need to manually copy data out of the containers. Personally, if all you’re talking about is 32 gigs max, I would just stop all of the containers, copy everything to the new NFS locations, and then re-create the containers to point at the new NFS locations.

All this said though, some applications really don’t like their data stored on NFS. I know Plex really doesn’t function well when it’s database is on NFS. But, the Plex media directories are fine to host from NFS.

Yea, I don’t think this is necessarily a horrible idea. It’s just that this doesn’t really provide any extra security, but even the first line of this blog is talking about security. This will absolutely provide privacy via pretty good traffic obfuscation, but you still need good security configuration of the exposed service.

If I understand this correctly, you’re still forwarding it a port from one network to another. It’s just in this case, instead of a port on the internet, it’s a port on the TOR network. Which is still just as open, but also a massive calling card for anyone trolling around the TOR network for things to hack.

This isn’t about social platforms or using the newest-hottest tech. It’s about following industry standard practices. You act like source control is such a pain in the ass and that it’s some huge burden. And that I just don’t understand. Getting started with git is so simple, and setting up an account with a repo host is a one time thing. I find it hard to believe that you don’t already have ssh keys set up too. What I find more controversial and concerning is your ho-hum opinion on automated testing, and your belief that “most software doesn’t do it”. You’re writing software that you expect people to not only run on their infra, but also expose to the public internet. Not only that, but it also needs to protect the traffic between the server on public infra and client on private infra. There is a much higher expectation of good practices being in place. And it is clear that you are willingly disregarding basic industry standard practices.

Github and Gitlab are free, and both even allow private repos for free at this point. Git is practically one of the first tools I install on a dev machine. Likewise, git is the defacto means of package management in golang. It’s so built in that module names are repo URLs.

Git was literally written by Linus to manage the source of the kernel. Sure patches are proposed via mailing list, but the actual source is hosted and managed via git. It is literally the gold standard, and source control is a foundational piece of software development. Same with not just unit tests, but functional testing too. You absolutely should not be putting off testing.

Gotta be honest, downloading security related software from a random drive is sending off sketchy vibes. Fundamentally, it’s no different than a random untrusted git repo. But, I really would suggest using some source control rather than trying to roll your own with diff archives.

Likewise, I would also suggest adding in some unit and functional tests. Not only would it help maintain software quality, but also build confidence in other folks using the software you are releasing.