Copying Files Into boot2docker

Getting files into boot2docker isn’t the easiest thing. You would think a tech that is based on Dockerfiles (let alone the other config files devs make) would make getting files in and out simple– not the case.

This is the most common method of copying files into boot2docker. I couldn’t get it to work. Maybe because i’m on windows.

Bash To The Rescue

After you see it, you wonder how you didn’t think of it.

So we all know we do the following to get into a boot2docker VM:

$ boot2docker ssh

To copy a file in?

#! /bin/bash

# get the contents of our file
dockerfile=`cat Dockerfile`;

# copy it into the vm
boot2docker ssh "echo $dockerfile > Dockerfile"

And its waiting in your VM for you. Obviously you could mix this with an ls and a while loop to copy in many files.