Grafana crashes: /var/lib/grafana is not writable

[Stefan-Code]

When running docker-compose up grafana crashes with:

grafana_1        | GF_PATHS_DATA='/var/lib/grafana' is not writable.
grafana_1        | You may have issues with file permissions, more information here: http://docs.grafana.org/installation/docker/#migration-from-a-previous-version-of-the-docker-container-to-5-1-or-later
grafana_1        | mkdir: cannot create directory '/var/lib/grafana/plugins': Permission denied

Pretty sure this is related to grafana/grafana-docker#154

[Stefan-Code]

This can be solved by manually chown-ing the grafana directory on the host to 472:472, but there's got to be a better way.

[raul1991]

Even doing a chown does not fix it. I have fsGroup: 472 runAsUser: 472 and the directories belong to 472:472

[brianfeucht]

@raul1991 newer versions of grafana are using user 104 I had to chown 104:104 /data/grafana and it works with this in my docker compose:

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:7.0.1
    volumes:
        - /data/grafana:/var/lib/grafana 
    ports:
        - "3000:3000"
    user: "104"

[raul1991]

@brianfeucht Thanks for.the update. Can you confirm if 472:472 works with version 6 of grafana.

[brianfeucht]

@raul1991 the change to uid:104 was made in v5.1 - http://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/installation/docker/#migrate-to-v5-1-or-later

I did confirm that chown 472:472 /data/grafana2 works with the following docker-compose config:

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:7.0.1
    volumes:
        - /data/grafana2:/var/lib/grafana 
    ports:
        - "3000:3000"
    user: "472"

[juanmercadoit]

Hi all:

I had the same issue and solved with 2 steps:

1. Identified the OS user and id.
2. Change the docker compose.
3. Run docker-compos fine without errors !

Example:

    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    container_name: monitoring_grafana
    user: "1014"

The User id

drwxr-xr-x  4 grafana root 4096 Feb  5 16:45 data/
drwxr-xr-x  3 grafana root 4096 Feb  5 17:47 var/

Working Fine !

[IIIdefconIII]

GF_PATHS_DATA='/var/lib/grafana' is not writable.
You may have issues with file permissions, more information here: http://docs.grafana.org/installation/docker/#migrate-to-v51-or-later

[devhero]

user: "${UID}:${GID}" solves the permission issue
image: grafana/grafana:main use the most recent

grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:main
    volumes:
        - /data/grafana:/var/lib/grafana 
    ports:
        - "3000:3000"
    user: "${UID}:${GID}"

[IIIdefconIII]

Or try chmod that folder to the correct guid and puid user but like the answer before it should work with puid guid environment values