4.4. How to Save Data Packets to an Externally Mounted Hard Drive?

Since autonomous driving data packets recorded daily are quite large, we plan to use an external hard drive to store this data. How can this be achieved?

4.4.1. Answer

By default, data is stored within the container. To achieve data persistence and prevent data loss, it’s necessary to mount the external hard drive to a specific directory on the host, then mount that directory into the container. This way, the data is stored on the hard drive and won’t be lost when the container stops.

4.4.2. Steps to Mount a Hard Drive to a Container in Ubuntu

  1. Identify the external hard drive device

    lsblk

    Find your external hard drive device name (e.g., /dev/sdb1).

  2. Create a mount directory

    Create a directory to mount the hard drive (e.g., /apollo/data/bag).

    cd apollo
sudo mkdir -p data/bag

  3. Mount the hard drive

    Use the mount command to mount the hard drive to this directory.

    sudo mount /dev/sdb1 data/bag

  4. [Skip] Start the container and mount the directory

    When starting the container, bind the mount directory to a path within the container (e.g., /data).

    docker run -v /mnt/external_drive:/data your_container_image

    > Since the apollo directory is already mounted in the container, this step can be skipped.

Thus, data on the external hard drive can be accessed within the container’s /data directory and will persist even if the container restarts or stops.

4.4.3. Recording Data Packets

Record data packets and specify the save path.

cyber_recorder record -a -o=data/bag