SBC: Images must already be present when creating container if external mount point is not specfied

[Dave247]

Through trial and error I've discovered that for the images of the figures to show up the folder it's respective images have to already be present in the correct location when building the container with podman/docker in order for them to show up on the webpage. Restarting the container isn't enough for them to be picked up. I'm assuming it's because that this part of the code likely hasn't been touched since the original commit #208 which was before containers were used.

[aurarius1]

Technically if you mount the volume when creating the container like described in the README, the server should pick up the images (at the latest if you manually stop and then start the container again).

I also just pulled the images from the repo and tried it. When creating the container with the volume option and correct path to the image folder (which can be populated at any time, even while the container is running) it should work as intended. In my case I started with an empty folder, created the container, started the container, copied some images into the folder and refreshed the page. The characters then showed up with their correct images.

EDIT: Note that if you did not mount the images folder (empty or not) when creating the container, you will have to recreate the container if you want to add images. I am not sure if you can mount volumes to existing containers, I have never needed to.

[Dave247]

Ah that would be the cause then, I forgot about that part and haven't been making use of it, as I assumed by being marked as optional it meant it was to just an option to have it point to a location that was easier to access. I'm not as well versed with containers as I could be and forget about it's unique proprieties about how they work (creating isolated copies, etc).

Perhaps that part could be updated to make it clearer, as someone who has no idea how containers will not know what to do with it. Maybe even have include a basic mount point that would work with every/any distribution. Especially as I have noticed @VladimirKuletski working on making a standardised pre-built docker images (which would make things so much easier for the average end-user), for people to be able to use images at all something will have to be set at the mount point.

I suppose you could also just include the images as part of the docker image, but I think this would be something that people would prefer to be able to customise themselves. Also maybe it would technically count as including copyrighted files? And/or needlessly increase the file size for those who don;t them.