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apptainer

Why does the apptainer seem to have access to my home directory

I run this command

apptainer exec myfile.sif ls -la /app

and it will correctly show all the files in the container. However, I try

apptainer exec myfile.sif ls -la ~

and it will show all the files in my home directory.

I'm confused. Why is that? Does the apptainer exec command automatically bind my home directory to the container?

Solution

  • Yes some directories, including $HOME are mounted automatically. See the documentation:

    In the default configuration, the default bind mounts are:

    • The user’s home directory ($HOME)
    • The current working directory (CWD), unless its path contains symlinks resolving to different locations on the host vs inside the container.
    • /dev
    • /etc/hosts
    • /etc/localtime
    • /proc
    • /sys
    • /tmp
    • /var/tmp