I’ve mentioned in a previous post that Docker recommends that you avoid volume mounts from the Windows host, but sometimes you just have to have it. You’ll want to set up the Shared Drives feature in your Docker for Windows settings to get that going. You’ll only need this feature if you need to share files from your Windows host to the Linux containers. If you are working with Windows containers, it shouldn’t be necessary, as per the Docker documentation.
Simply select the checkbox for the drive letter you want to share and you will be prompted for credentials. After that the drive letter should remain checked and you’ll be able to mount volumes under your users home directory.
In my case, the only account on my machine with Administrator privileges was my “domain” account… aka DOMAIN\username, which was prefilled in the credentials box. Upon entering my password, Docker for Windows thought at bit, reporting that it was updating the settings, cleared the checkbox and the declared itself to be finished. Leaving my C drive unshared. Grrr.
It occurred to me that maybe Docker for Windows didn’t like the DOMAIN\username format, so I tried my UPN format instead – username@domain.com. That immediately failed as an invalid account, however when I checked my account settings on my PC, the account is clearly listed at DOMAIN\username. I say this is a “Domain Account”, however the machine is not domain joined so its authenticating via Azure AD. I did some hunting around and there are some related issues since 2016, which don’t seem to have a clear resolution – https://github.com/docker/for-win/issues/132 and https://github.com/docker/for-win/issues/303
In addition to my work account, I also have my personal MSA (Microsoft Account) account as an alternate account on this machine. It didn’t have Administrator rights, but figured it was worth a shot. I entered my MSA email address and password and lo and behold… It worked! The C drive checkbox stayed and Docker was able to mount some local volumes. Due to the non-Administrative nature of that account, I did find I had to add on some additional file sharing at subfolder needed during a Docker build, but otherwise I was good to go.
The end result is if you are having problems turning on the Docker for Windows shared drives feature, you may need to use or create an alternative local account.
TECHBUNNY 