Unofficial Guide: Portable storage support

General Discussions
1

So I been digging into Umbrel’s source code looking where they disabled portable storage support. Found it.

SSH to your Umbrel and type:

sudo nano /opt/umbreld/source/modules/is-umbrel-home.ts

Change this:

import fse from 'fs-extra'
import systeminfo from 'systeminformation'

export default async function isUmbrelHome() {
        // This file exists in old versions of amd64 Umbrel OS builds due to the Docker build system.
        // It confuses the systeminfo library and makes it return the model as 'Docker Container'.
      await fse.remove('/.dockerenv')

      const {manufacturer, model} = await systeminfo.system()

      return manufacturer === 'Umbrel, Inc.' && model === 'Umbrel Home'
}

to:

import fse from 'fs-extra'
import systeminfo from 'systeminformation'

export default async function isUmbrelHome() {
return true

}

And there you go…

Screenshot 2025-08-15 9.02.26 PM
Screenshot 2025-08-15 9.02.26 PM1920×1143 581 KB

2 Likes
2

Now the secret is out! Gosh. :stuck_out_tongue: Thank you.

3

Wow great guide, thanks for sharing. Is there a way to store a copy of the Bitcoin blockchain on a external drive and point Knots to the blockchain data?

4

Not sure what you mean by this. Typically, I mount an external SSD on my device, mount it in /etc/fstab and access it via the appropriate docker-compose.yml. Can you explain?

5

I think he means you can not tell Knots where to look for blockchain data.