Installing Seafile server in Docker Desktop on Windows

Seafile Server
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1

Hi all

Has anyone managed to get Seafile server running on Windows using Docker Desktop? I can’t get the docker setup to like the paths in the yaml. I get this error

Error response from daemon: invalid mount config for type “volume”: invalid mount path: ‘m:/docker/seafile/mysql-data’ mount path must be absolute.

Anyone been able to get past this or have any suggestions?

Olly

2

The error occurs because Docker Desktop’s parser sometimes misinterprets Windows-style drive letters (like m:) in volume mappings. To resolve this, you can try the following:

1. Use Linux-style paths

Instead of using m:/..., use the Linux-style path format in your .env or docker-compose.yml file. For example:
SEAFILE_MYSQL_VOLUME=/m/docker/seafile/mysql-data

2. Recommendation: Use the WSL 2 filesystem

If you are using the WSL 2 backend for Docker Desktop (which is the default and recommended way), it is highly recommended not to store MariaDB/MySQL data on a Windows host drive (NTFS).

MariaDB often encounters severe permission and performance issues when its data directory is mounted to a Windows drive via Docker. For a much more stable setup, store your data within the WSL 2 internal filesystem (e.g., /home/your-user/seafile-data).

You can access these files from Windows by navigating to \\wsl$\.