Chris Dzombak

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How to move Docker's data directory from /var/lib

How to move Docker's data directory from /var/lib

I recently had to move Docker’s data directory on my home NAS (from the root filesystem to the storage array). I found some incomplete and inconsistent information on the Web about how to do this, so for future reference here’s the process I used to do it successfully on an Ubuntu 22 server:

1. Disable Docker

systemctl mask docker.socket
systemctl stop docker.service

You must mask docker.socket, or Docker may restart while you’re moving the data directory, resulting in corruption. (Ask me how I know!)

2. Copy the data

cp -RPp /var/lib/docker /mnt/storage/_var-lib-docker
mv /var/lib/docker /var/lib/docker.old

Rather than moving the data to the new location with mv, I opted to copy it and keep the old one around as a backup until I was certain everything was working properly.

Those cp flags are:

3. Restart Docker

systemctl unmask docker.socket
systemctl start docker.service

After this, you just need to be sure your containers come back up and are running as expected.