Explain setting file permission on Windows when using Docker to set up a node.

[Thomasedv]

Hello,

A requirement to run a node (and verify the key pair) is that the following permissions are set. The following command is provided on the Connect to Network page, under the Docker section. (The commands are also used on the key pair generation page.)

chmod 700 ~/keys
chmod 600 ~/keys/my-wallet

Windows users can't normally run these commands, and that may pose a problem if the user decides to share a windows folder containing the keys to docker using the --bind/--volume commands. The user may face an issue where the programs throw an error that the permissions are incorrectly set.

The suggestion is to add a warning block in the docs to Windows users, informing them to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to perform the permission changes. Modern Docker makes use of WSL, and it is assumed that it's enabled on the Windows machine using Docker.

Here is a short guide showing how to perform these steps from a windows terminal. In my case, using Powershell, but it's assumed the command line (CMD) works as well.

1. Open Powershell/CMD in the directory where the keys folder is located.
2. Type wsl -d docker-desktop to open Windows Subsystem for Linux with the docker-desktop distribution (It should be available since you installed docker). You are now in a linux environment, and can run the above commands, however, some modifications need to be done.
3. Since the active directory is the folder with the files, you can drop the ~, and you need to make sure that you only use forward / slashes. The process will look something like the following. If no error message appears, the permission change completed successfully.

PS C:\CryptoWallet> wsl docker-desktop
Desktop-name:/tmp/docker-desktop-root/mnt/host/c/CryptoWallet# chmod 700 keys
Desktop-name:/tmp/docker-desktop-root/mnt/host/c/CryptoWallet# chmod 600 keys/my-wallet

This should allow users to continue as normal with the installation and use of the mina node software.