Quartz 5

importing-vault

3 min read

Mounting the Vault as a Volume

The container path of the Obsidian vault is located at /vault. If no volume bind is provided, the container will copy example documentation to /vault, allowing it to be used as a demonstration.

The recommended way to provide the Obsidian vault to the container is by using a bind-mount volume:

-v /path/on/host:/vault:ro

Note When possible use the :ro (read-only) flag to prevent unintentional modifications to the vault from within the container.

Using a Different Path with VAULT_DIR

VAULT_DIR sets the directory Quartz builds from. It defaults to /vault, so if you mount your vault there you never need to set it.

Set it when the notes live somewhere else in the container:

-e VAULT_DIR=/notes -v /path/on/host:/notes:ro

If the directory does not exist, the container stops at startup with an error instead of building an empty site.

Notes That Live in Your Own Quartz Repo

Quartz keeps its notes in the content folder of the repository. If you set GIT_REPO to your own Quartz repo and committed your notes to it, point VAULT_DIR at that folder and skip the vault mount entirely:

environment:
  GIT_REPO: "https://github.com/yourusername/your-quartz-site.git"
  VAULT_DIR: "/usr/src/app/quartz/content"

The check happens after the clone, so a path inside the checkout is fine. Upstream Quartz ships content empty, so make sure your own notes are committed there and not just sitting on your disk.

Also keep in mind that an existing Quartz checkout wins over GIT_REPO, see Providing Quartz. If you mounted a volume at /usr/src/app/quartz and it already has content, a changed GIT_REPO is ignored and so are the notes in it.

Updating the Vault

There are two main methods to update the vault contents: External Updates and Git-based Updates.

1. External Updates

If you are using an external tool such as Syncthing, direct editing with Obsidian, or any other synchronization method, you can trigger a rebuild of the Quartz site through an auto-rebuild mechanism, a cron job, or a webhook.

Example: Syncthing Setup

  • Syncthing can sync the entire Obsidian vault to a directory, e.g., /home/user/Obsidian/.
  • Bind volume to container -v /home/user/Obsidian:/vault:ro
  • Quartz will detect changes when syncthing syncs and execute rebuild
  • If auto update (detect on file changes) is disabled, cronjob or webhook can be used to execute update.

Post Webhook Plugin can be useful for this scenario.

2. Git-based Updates

If your Obsidian vault is hosted in a Git repository (e.g., GitHub), follow these steps:

  1. Prepare the vault folder on the host machine: 
    mkdir /path/on/host/vault
  2. Perform an initial Git clone or pull into this folder: 
    git clone <your-repo-url> /path/on/host/vault
  3. Set the environment variable to enable automatic Git pulls: 
    VAULT_DO_GIT_PULL_ON_UPDATE=true
  4. Choose an update strategy:
    • Cron job: Schedule periodic updates
    • Webhook: Trigger rebuilds on repository changes

Before rebuilding, the container will execute a git pull inside the vault directory to fetch the latest changes. That is /vault unless you set VAULT_DIR, in which case it is that directory.

Note: When using Git-based updates volume needs read-write permissions to execute git pull. Mount volume with /path/on/host/git_vault:/vault without the :ro flag.

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