Keeping a Guestbook Through Container Rebuilds is a practical Docker project for learners with basic terminal familiarity. You maintain Afterlight, a community exhibition whose visitor contributions must survive an application replacement.
One Guided Lab takes you from a deliberately disposable copy to a guestbook with lasting storage. One independent Challenge extends the same method to a photo wall, where captions and image bytes live in separate directories. Each unit starts in its own prepared environment.
What You Will Learn
- distinguish reproducible application files from visitor data;
- connect existing named volumes to the correct application paths with Compose;
- inspect real mounts and recover from an accidental empty-volume attachment;
- replace a container while keeping original and new contributions;
- preserve uploaded photographs together with their captions, and accept a new upload after replacement.
Who This Course Is For
This course is for Docker and DevOps beginners who can enter terminal commands. You do not need another project in this series, SQL knowledge or application programming experience. Paths, containers, Compose YAML, editing and HTTP are explained before use.
LabEx supplies a browser-based Linux workstation, Docker, Compose, the application and synthetic exhibition records. Use Workstation for commands and Exhibition for the real business pages. The guided unit also supplies a separate Practice Copy for the deliberate data-loss experiment. No local Docker installation or external account is required.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will I write a database application?
No. You work on storage declarations and application replacement; the guestbook and photo-upload application are supplied.
Is a Docker volume a backup?
No. It can outlive a container, but deleting the volume or losing the host can still lose its data. This course teaches single-host container persistence, not a complete backup or high-availability system.
What does the Challenge change?
You preserve two related data locations, keeping both photographs and captions through replacement. The mount and checking methods are introduced in the Guided Lab.
Which languages are available?
Instructions, verification hints, challenge solutions and course introductions are provided in English and eight localized languages. The demonstration website, interface labels, commands and output remain in English.
