I’m running into issues with file permissions when trying to run a Dockerized CodeIgniter 4 project on Windows using WSL2 and Docker Compose. The project worked fine on Docker Desktop, but when I tried moving it onto WSL2 for performance reasons I got a 403 Forbidden error.

Environment:
OS: Windows 10 with WSL2 (Ubuntu)
Docker: Docker Engine running inside WSL2
Application Framework: CodeIgniter 4

My docker-compose.yml:

services:
  portal:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8001:80"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html

My Dockerfile:

FROM php:8.1-apache

# Copy application files to the container
COPY . /var/www/html/

# Install dependencies
RUN apt-get update 
&& apt-get install -y curl git unzip libpq-dev libicu-dev libzip-dev gnupg 
zlib1g-dev g++ libpng-dev libonig-dev unixodbc-dev 
&& curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer > composer_installer.php &&  
php composer_installer.php 
&& mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer && 
rm composer_installer.php

# Install SQL Server Drivers & Tools
RUN curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | apt-key add -
RUN curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/prod.list > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-release.list
RUN apt-get update && ACCEPT_EULA=Y apt-get install -y msodbcsql18 
    && ACCEPT_EULA=Y apt-get install -y mssql-tools18 
    && echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc 
    source ~/.bashrc
    
# Enable extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo intl gd mbstring zip 
    && pecl install sqlsrv pdo_sqlsrv  
    && docker-php-ext-enable sqlsrv pdo_sqlsrv 
    && apt-get update 
    && apt-get install -y libxml2-dev 
    && docker-php-ext-install soap

# Create folder cache and permissions
RUN mkdir -p writable/cache
RUN chown -R www-data:www-data writable/cache 
    && chmod -R 775 writable/cache

# Configurando apache
RUN a2enmod rewrite

# Expose port 80 the container for web traffic
EXPOSE 80

I have uninstalled Docker Desktop, I’ve tried running it both inside the WSL2 filesystem itself and through the mnt but neither of those times it has worked.

When I tried accessing my ci4’s index through localhost:8001/public whilist building it from the mnt I got this error:

Fatal error: Uncaught ErrorException: chmod(): Operation not permitted in /var/www/html/vendor/codeigniter4/framework/system/Log/Handlers/FileHandler.php:121
T

After I copied my project’s files directly onto the WSL2 and tried to access the same link it seemingly worked, as I was redirected to another file(intentional), but that file had broken CSS and just generally wasn’t working properly.

I’ve tried changing permissions, adding in chown -R www-data:www-data . && chmod -R 775 . and it didn’t have any effect on the issue.