I am out of space on my dockerapps disk and need to swap it out for larger. I searched around and couldn't find any info on doing this. Does anyone know of any instructions or can advise me how if you've done it before?

thanks!

S.

Attach Diagnostics ZIP to your NEXT post in this thread.

Here is what I propose to do. Note that I only have 1 NVME slot so cannot copy directly to new one. Please let me know if this is correct:

• Stop all docker apps.

• Using file manager, copy the contents of the dockerapps NVME drive to virtmachines drive (since it is currently empty).

• Shut down Unraid machine and change NVME drive to larger one.

• Boot up and assign new NVME drive to be dockerapps.

• copy contents of old dockerapps from virtmachines to new dockerapps drive.

• Start docker apps

Does it look like this will do it?

unraidserver-diagnostics-20250618-1152.zip

Edited June 18, 20251 yr by Steve_UR

Looks like you decided to deviate from the "standard" way to setup docker.

DOCKER_IMAGE_FILE="/mnt/dockerapps/docker.img"
DOCKER_APP_CONFIG_PATH="/mnt/dockerapps/"

This means your docker.img is not actually in any user share since it is at the top level of the pool. And it means that if you don't specify "appdata" or some other user share, the appdata path for a new container may default to the top level of that pool also, which might mean a new container would create a new user share for its appdata.

10 minutes ago, Steve_UR said:

Stop all docker apps.

That is not sufficient. You must disable Docker in Settings before you try to work with these files.

Hi again,

Thank you for your advice, much appreciated.

I haven't found the time to make these changes yet, but now have a new 1TB NVME drive (to replace the old 128 GB cache drive) and plan to do it soon.

I couldn't find anything in the Unraid documentation that describes where and how to set up the docker.img file.

ChatGPT says to create a user share called "system" on the cache drive and put it there. Is that considered best practice?

My current cache drive consists of 2 x 128 GB mSATA SSDs on a PCIe adapter card. Any suggestions for how to make use of them now after making this change, or are they just redundant?

I'm thinking virtual machines should also reside in /mnt/user/system/ rather than the way I had set it up to use a separate SSD.

I can't remember where I found the original instructions that told me to set up separate SSDs for docker.img and libvirt.img, probably ChatGPT, so want to be sure I do it right this time!

Thanks again.

The paths specified in Settings - Docker are automatically created when you enable Docker, if those paths don't already exist.

The paths specified in Settings - VM Manager are automatically created when you enable VM Manager, if those paths don't already exist.

Any folder at the top level of array disks (/mnt/disk#), pools(/mnt/poolname), or user shares (/mnt/user) is automatically a user share.

The "default" shares:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/shares/user-shares/#default-shares

Ideally, those Docker/VM related shares would have all files on cache or other pool, with nothing on the array, so Docker/VM performance won't be impacted by slower array reads and especially writes, and so array disks can spin down since these files are always open.

2 hours ago, Steve_UR said:

My current cache drive consists of 2 x 128 GB mSATA SSDs on a PCIe adapter card. Any suggestions for how to make use of them now after making this change, or are they just redundant?

That would be large enough for system share, and probably even appdata share. The nvme could be used to cache user shares, and for domains share (VM vdisks).

After you get your hardware configured like you want, post diagnostics for more specific advice/instructions on how to get those Docker/VM related shares setup where they belong.

6 minutes ago, trurl said:

The "default" shares:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/shares/user-shares/#default-shares

I recommend just following these standards. Things would have already been setup like that by default but you changed them.

Hi again,

I finally found time to work on the server:

• Moved docker.img to a cached system folder

• removed the small 16GB NVME and replaced with 1TB NVME for caching user files and system images etc.

• retained the 128 GB SSD to cache just appdata and frigate recordings.

@trurl thanks for your help on this. I think I have it set up reasonably well now.

Deleted the rest of my original post due to stupidity ;)

S.

Edited July 30, 2025Jul 30 by Steve_UR
Finally figured it out.