Unable to access volume content using initContainers - kubernetes

Question

I have a simple image (mdw:1.0.0) with some content in it:
FROM alpine:3.9
COPY /role /mdw
WORKDIR /mdw
I was expecting that my container 'nginx' would see the content of /mdw folder, but there is no file.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: init-demo
spec:
initContainers:
- name: install
image: mdw:1.0.0
imagePullPolicy: Never
volumeMounts:
- name: workdir
mountPath: "/mdw"
containers:
- name: nginx
image: nginx
volumeMounts:
- name: workdir
mountPath: /mdw
command: ["ls", "-l", "/mdw"]
volumes:
- name: workdir
emptyDir: {}
Do you know what is the reason and how to fix it ?
Thank you very much

Answer 1

When mounting volume if directory already exists will get wiped. It's intentional and no fix really.
Only way would be to populate the directory after mounting is done.

Answer 2

Your init container doesn't do anything: the Dockerfile doesn't have a CMD and the Kubernetes deployment spec doesn't set a command: either. It starts and immediately exits. (The base Linux distribution images generally have a default command to launch an interactive shell, but absent a tty this will also immediately exit.)
Meanwhile, your Kubernetes setup is also mounting an empty directory over the only content you've put into the image, which prevents the init container from having an effect.
You can build a custom nginx image that directly copies the content in:
FROM nginx
COPY /role /usr/share/nginx/html
Don't use initContainers:, and use that image as the main containers: image.
There is a Docker-specific feature, using Docker named volumes, that can populate a named volume on first use, and you're probably thinking of this feature. This comes with a couple of important caveats (it only takes effect the very first time you run a container, and ignores updates to the image; it doesn't work with bind mounts). This is a plain-Docker-specific feature: Kubernetes will never auto-populate a volume for you.