Mount a partition from a Proxmox hardware node to openvz container(s)

Sometime we need to access another partition outside our OpenVZ container. In Proxmox PVE you can do this easily, but require manual configuration (can not be done from Proxmox admin) and will require your OpenVZ container reboot.

[STEP 1] create the destination directory in the container:

in this example, I am mounting /mnt/<name> from hardware node to /data_ssd in container

mkdir /data_ssd

chmod -R 777 /data_ssd

shutdown the container:

shutdown -h now

[STEP 2] prepare the mount to whatever partition you would like to access (ON HARDWARE NODE)

on the proxmox HN:

mkdir /mnt/<name>    (name example 'ssd_shared')

chmod -R 777 /mnt/<name>

in this example I am mounting an LVM partition called lvm_ssd.

lets make sure the partition will be mounted automatically on HN boot.

blkid            (copy the UUID of the newly created LVM partition)

Then make sure your fstab file has the following entry:

nano /etc/fstab

UUID=<uuid> /mnt/<name> ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime,noacl,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh,discard,errors=remount-ro 0 2

To make sure the fstab setting work, execute the command below to auto-mount all fstab entries

mount -a

[STEP 3] setup the container's configuration file to allow container to access the shared mount

cd /etc/pve/openvz

nano <ctid>.mount                 (ctid is the container ID for example 112)

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/vz/vz.conf

. ${VE_CONFFILE}

SRC=/mnt/<name>

DST=/data_ssd

if [ ! -e ${VE_ROOT}${DST} ]; then mkdir -p ${VE_ROOT}${DST}; fi

mount -o noatime -n -t simfs ${SRC} ${VE_ROOT}${DST} -o ${SRC}

[STEP 4] Test by starting the container

once container has started back up, execute the 'mount' command to see all your mounted partition in your container. Mine looks like this:

/mnt/md0/private/112 on / type simfs (rw,relatime)

/mnt/ssd_shared on /data_ssd type simfs (rw,noatime)

proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)

none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,mode=600,ptmxmode=000)

none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

none on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=419432k,mode=755)

none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)

none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime)

The one I highlighted in yellow is the /mnt/ssd_shared (from HN) that was already mounted to /data_ssd inside container 112.

You can also use 'df' (disk free) command to check the available disk space, mine looks like this:

Filesystem      1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/simfs      167772160 113525032  54247128  68% /

/dev/simfs       16513960   4398600  11276500  29% /data_ssd

none               419432       996    418436   1% /run

none                 5120         0      5120   0% /run/lock

none              2097152         0   2097152   0% /run/shm

You are done!