Docker container in restart loop

[MemQu]

Description

I have a local + server setup. I noticed I was getting 500 PUT: Note xxxx (is readonly)

The part in brackets is not verbatim. I put in what I made of the message.

So I nuked the container and setup and tried to make the container and volumes again. (This is running off a removable volume)

Docker container enters a restart loop.

I ran docker logs --tail 50 --follow --timestamps

This gives me:
Error: EACCESS: permission denied, mkdir{
at Gz (main.cjs:1:44302)
at JYr (main.cjs:1:43210)

errno: -13,
code: 'EACCESS'
syscall: 'mkdir'
path: xxx
}

It seems the container does not have permissions to create stuff inside the data folder.

This is a recent development. I had a working sync server a few months ago.

chown did not work. Any idea what would work to fix this? Some USERID GID stuff? I'm using the docker script provided in the repo. All of the solutions on web have changes to the build process, which I'm not ready to deal with.

TriliumNext Version

0.101.1, 0.101.0, 0.100.0

What operating system are you using?

Ubuntu

What is your setup?

Local + server sync

Operating System Version

Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS

Error logs

None available, container fails on setup.

[dosubot[bot]]

Your restart loop and EACCES errors are almost certainly due to a mismatch between the UID/GID of the user inside the Trilium container (usually 1000:1000 by default) and the ownership of your mounted data directory on the host. This is especially common with removable volumes or after recreating containers. The container expects to write to the data directory as the 'node' user, and if the host directory isn't owned by UID/GID 1000 (or whatever you set via USER_UID/USER_GID), you'll get permission denied errors and restart loops reference reference.

First, check the filesystem type of your removable volume. If it's not a Linux-native filesystem (like ext4), but something like exFAT, NTFS, or FAT32, then chown/chmod won't work as expected and Docker containers may not be able to write to it at all reference.

If your volume supports Unix permissions, run this on the host (replace the path as needed):

sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /path/to/your/trilium-data

Or, if your host directory is owned by a different UID/GID, set the USER_UID and USER_GID environment variables in your docker-compose file to match the owner of the directory reference.

If you use a custom data directory (TRILIUM_DATA_DIR), make sure the directory exists and is writable by the container user. The default and best-supported path is /home/node/trilium-data reference.

If you still have issues, you can run a one-off container as root to fix permissions:

docker run --rm -v /path/to/your/trilium-data:/home/node/trilium-data -u root triliumnext/notes chown -R node:node /home/node/trilium-data

If your removable volume is not ext4 or another Linux filesystem, consider reformatting it if possible, or use a directory on an internal drive.

Let me know your filesystem type or if you need help checking UID/GID on your host.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[eliandoran]

@dosu is right, check the permissions of the data directory.

[MemQu]

@dosu is right, check the permissions of the data directory.

I've tried all of them 😢. None of it works. Retried after dosu posted and following the references closely. Still nothing.

[eliandoran]

@MemQu , can you do a ls -l of the data directory (outside the Docker container) to see how it looks like?