# Move from standalone container to separate web and data containers

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413
**Category:** Sysadmins
**Tags:** docker, how-to, advanced-setup, two-container
**Created:** [May 29, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413 "2015-05-29T14:12:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 117

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2025, 3:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413/117 "2025-09-09T15:55:37Z")

</div>

> [@merefield](#):
>
> what’s gone wrong here and what should I change on that directory for the web\_only container - should it be the same as for [standard install](https://meta.discourse.org/t/142537?silent=true)?

tl;dr maybe try

```plaintext
docker exec -it web_only bash
chown -R discourse:www-data /shared/backups

```

And more words.

Without looking, I’d next try rebuilding the data container, hoping that whatever change was made also got made to (or affects) the data container.

The bad-advice answer is to make `...backups/default` world writable and seeing the ownership of the backup.

> [@merefield](#):
>
> ```plaintext
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 6 12:37 default
> 
> ```

> [@merefield](#):
>
> ```plaintext
> drwxr-xr-x 2 discourse www-data 4096 Sep 9 03:46 default
> 
> ```

So I think what you want to do is chown default to discourse.www-data in the web container (that’s the one doing the backups).

Here’s a recent single-container:

```plaintext
root@forum.mbse-capella.org(app):~$ docker exec -it app bash
root@new-app:/# grep www /etc/passwd
www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
root@new-app:/# grep discourse /etc/passwd
discourse:x:1000:1000::/home/discourse:/bin/bash

```

At some points in the past the build process would `chown` all the files, but it can take a really long time, so I think that may have been removed at some point (this is more than a feeling than anything based on paying attention to commits).

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