k8s initContainer mountPath does not exist after kubectl pod deployment - kubernetes

Question

Below is deployment yaml, after deployment, I could access the pod
and I can see the mountPath "/usr/share/nginx/html", but I could not find
"/work-dir" which should be created by initContainer.
Could someone explain me the reason?
Thanks and Rgds
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: init-demo
spec:
containers:
- name: nginx
image: nginx
ports:
- containerPort: 80
volumeMounts:
- name: workdir
mountPath: /usr/share/nginx/html
# These containers are run during pod initialization
initContainers:
- name: install
image: busybox
command:
- wget
- "-O"
- "/work-dir/index.html"
- http://kubernetes.io
volumeMounts:
- name: workdir
mountPath: "/work-dir"
dnsPolicy: Default
volumes:
- name: workdir
emptyDir: {}

Answer 1

The volume at "/work-dir" is mounted by the init container and the "/work-dir" location only exists in the init container. When the init container completes, its file system is gone so the "/work-dir" directory in that init container is "gone". The application (nginx) container mounts the same volume, too, (albeit at a different location) providing mechanism for the two containers to share its content.
Per the docs:
Init containers can run with a different view of the filesystem than
app containers in the same Pod.

Answer 2

The volume mount with a PVC allows you to share the contents of /work-dir/ and /use/share/nginx/html/ but it does not mean the nginx container will have the /work-dir folder. Given this, you may think that you could just mount the path / which would allow you to share all folders underneath. However, a mountPath does not work for /.
So, how do you solve your problem? You could have another pod mount /work-dir/ in case you actually need the folder. Here is an example (pvc and deployment with mounts):
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: shared-fs-pvc
namespace: default
labels:
mojix.service: default-pvc
spec:
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
namespace: default
name: shared-fs
labels:
mojix.service: shared-fs
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
mojix.service: shared-fs
template:
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
mojix.service: shared-fs
spec:
terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 3
containers:
- name: nginx-c
image: nginx:latest
volumeMounts:
- name: shared-fs-volume
mountPath: /var/www/static/
- name: alpine-c
image: alpine:latest
command: ["/bin/sleep", "10000s"]
lifecycle:
postStart:
exec:
command: ["/bin/mkdir", "-p", "/work-dir"]
volumeMounts:
- name: shared-fs-volume
mountPath: /work-dir/
volumes:
- name: shared-fs-volume
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: shared-fs-pvc