postgres image (or Docker) ignores updates to .sql files but not .sh files in /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d??

[ShiraazMoollatjie]

I have a docker compose file that looks like this. (postgres:alpine is currently pointing at v10.3)

    version: '3'
    services:
      webapp:
        build: '.'
        ports: 
          - "8000:8000"
        networks:
          - db
    
      postgres:
        image: "postgres:alpine"
        environment:
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "password"
        volumes:
          - "./scripts:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d"
        networks:
          - db
    networks: 
      db:

The scripts folder looks like this:

|- scripts
 |-- init.sh
 |-- init.sql

The Problem

My workflow for this project is progressive, so I add some SQL initialization data on my host OS, run sudo docker-compose down -v and then sudo docker-compose up. I did not update my user to not need the use of sudo for this scenario.

When I update the init.sh file, then these updates are reflected each time I run docker-compose up. The init.sql file however, only remembers the first "version" of this file. Any subsequent updates are ignored when running docker-compose up.

Things I tried

• Tried sudo docker-compose up --renew-anon-volumes --force-recreate which also does not seem to help.
• Tried pruning all the volumes with sudo docker volume prune. Does not help
• Tried pruning the docker system with sudo docker system prune
• What does work is if I copy the file and it's content to a new file name. Renaming the file does not work

So the question is simply, how do I get content updates of init.sql to be recognized by my docker compose setup?? I don't understand why changes to init.sh is picked up but changes to init.sql are ignored?

How to reproduce

• Add the postgres section to a docker-compose.yml file
• Add the scripts folder with an init.sh and init.sql file. The sql script can be anything, but below is what I used. The init.sh can have a bunch of echos.
• Start container with docker-compose up
• Make changes to the SQL file (e.g. add more insert statements or move table creation to the top)
• Make changes to the .sh file
• Run docker-compose down -v followed by docker-compose up
• You will see in the logs that the updated init.sh script runs and an outdated version of init.sql runs!!

CREATE TABLE CUSTOMER (
    ID SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    NAME VARCHAR(200)
);

SELECT NULL AS "Starting to insert into table CUSTOMER";

INSERT INTO CUSTOMER(NAME) VALUES ('Shiraaz Moollatjie');

CREATE TABLE MAILING_LIST (
    ID SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    NAME VARCHAR(200)
);

SELECT NULL AS "Starting to insert into table MAILING_LIST";
INSERT INTO MAILING_LIST(NAME) VALUES ('[email protected]');

COMMIT;

[ShiraazMoollatjie]

So it turns out that the underlying file system is playing a role here when using Docker Volumes. I have been using a virtualbox vm and the project was sitting on a vboxsf file system. So when attaching a volume in my docker compose scenario(?), it has been attaching to a vboxsf volume this whole time.

When I moved the project from the vboxsf filesystem to something else (whatever my home directory filesystem has, ext4 I think) then updates to the files worked as expected.

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/819?cversion=0&cnum_hist=70 is the link for more information

I don't think that this is a postgres image issue anymore, I will close this issue