Podman Installation Instructions

Installing on Mac & Windows

While “containers are Linux,” Podman also runs on Mac and Windows, where it provides a native podman CLI and embeds a guest Linux system to launch your containers. This guest is referred to as a Podman machine and is managed with the podman machine command. Podman on Mac and Windows also listens for Docker API clients, supporting direct usage of Docker-based tools and programmatic access from your language of choice.

MacOS

On Mac, each Podman machine is backed by a QEMU based virtual machine. Once installed, the podman command can be run directly from the Unix shell in Terminal, where it remotely communicates with the podman service running in the Machine VM.

For Mac, Podman is provided through Homebrew. Once you have set up brew, you can use the brew install command to install Podman:

brew install podman

Next, create and start your first Podman machine:

podman machine init
podman machine start

You can then verify the installation information using:

podman info

More advanced information can be found here.

Windows

On Windows, each Podman machine is backed by a virtualized Windows System for Linux (WSLv2) distribution. Once installed, the podman command can be run directly from your Windows PowerShell (or CMD) prompt, where it remotely communicates with the podman service running in the WSL environment. Alternatively, you can access Podman directly from the WSL instance if you prefer a Linux prompt and Linux tooling.

See the Podman for Windows guide for setup and usage instructions.

Installing on Linux

Linux Distributions

Arch Linux & Manjaro Linux

sudo pacman -S podman

If you have problems when running Podman in rootless mode follow the instructions here

Alpine Linux

sudo apk add podman

For further details, please refer to the instructions on the Alpine Linux wiki.

CentOS

Podman is available in the default Extras repos for CentOS 7 and in the AppStream repo for CentOS 8 and Stream.

sudo yum -y install podman

Debian

The podman package is available in the Debian 11 (Bullseye) repositories and later.

sudo apt-get -y install podman

Fedora

sudo dnf -y install podman

Podman v4 will not be shipped officially on Fedora 35. However, you can still fetch Podman v4 through our COPR repo.

sudo dnf -y copr enable rhcontainerbot/podman4
sudo dnf -y install podman

This COPR repo should not cause any issues while upgrading from Fedora 35 to Fedora 36. You can simply disable and delete the COPR repo before starting or after completing the upgrade.

sudo dnf -y copr disable rhcontainerbot/podman4
sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/_copr:copr.fedorainfracloud.org:rhcontainerbot:podman4.repo

Fedora-CoreOS, Fedora SilverBlue

Built-in, no need to install

Gentoo

sudo emerge app-emulation/podman

OpenEmbedded

Bitbake recipes for Podman and its dependencies are available in the meta-virtualization layer. Add the layer to your OpenEmbedded build environment and build Podman using:

bitbake podman

openSUSE

sudo zypper install podman

openSUSE Kubic

Built-in, no need to install

Raspberry Pi OS arm64 (beta)

Raspberry Pi OS use the standard Debian’s repositories, so it is fully compatible with Debian’s arm64 repository. You can simply follow the steps for Debian to install Podman.

RHEL7

Subscribe, then enable Extras channel and install Podman.

sudo subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms
sudo yum -y install podman

RHEL8

Podman is included in the container-tools module, along with Buildah and Skopeo.

sudo yum module enable -y container-tools:rhel8
sudo yum module install -y container-tools:rhel8

The container-tools:rhel8 is the fast application stream, containing most recent rolling versions of the tools. Use the container-tools:2.0 stream for stable versions of Podman 1.6. The command yum module list container-tools shows the available streams.

Ubuntu

The podman package is available in the official repositories for Ubuntu 20.10 and newer.

# Ubuntu 20.10 and newer
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install podman

NOTE: Kubic packages have been discontinued for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Current users of the Kubic repos for Ubuntu are highly recommended to uninstall the packages from the Kubic repos before upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Linuxmint 20.x

echo "deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/kubic:/libcontainers:/stable/xUbuntu_20.04/ /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/devel:kubic:libcontainers:stable.list
curl -L "https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/kubic:/libcontainers:/stable/xUbuntu_20.04/Release.key" | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y install podman

Installing development versions of Podman

Fedora

You can test the very latest Podman in Fedora’s updates-testing repository before it goes out to all Fedora users.

sudo dnf update --refresh --enablerepo=updates-testing podman

If you use a newer Podman package from Fedora’s updates-testing, we would appreciate your +1 feedback in Bodhi, Fedora’s update management system.

Building from scratch

Build and Run Dependencies

Required

Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and related distributions you should try to run make package-install which will install dependencies, build the source, produce rpms for the current platform and install them in the end.

sudo yum install -y \
  btrfs-progs-devel \
  conmon \
  containernetworking-plugins \
  containers-common \
  crun \
  device-mapper-devel \
  git \
  glib2-devel \
  glibc-devel \
  glibc-static \
  go \
  golang-github-cpuguy83-md2man \
  gpgme-devel \
  iptables \
  libassuan-devel \
  libgpg-error-devel \
  libseccomp-devel \
  libselinux-devel \
  make \
  pkgconfig

Debian, Ubuntu, and related distributions:

sudo apt-get install \
  btrfs-progs \
  git \
  golang-go \
  go-md2man \
  iptables \
  libassuan-dev \
  libbtrfs-dev \
  libc6-dev \
  libdevmapper-dev \
  libglib2.0-dev \
  libgpgme-dev \
  libgpg-error-dev \
  libprotobuf-dev \
  libprotobuf-c-dev \
  libseccomp-dev \
  libselinux1-dev \
  libsystemd-dev \
  pkg-config \
  runc \
  uidmap

On openSUSE Leap 15.x and Tumbleweed:

sudo zypper -n in libseccomp-devel libgpgme-devel

On Manjaro (and maybe other Linux distributions):

Make sure that the Linux kernel supports user namespaces:

> zgrep CONFIG_USER_NS /proc/config.gz
CONFIG_USER_NS=y

If not, please update the kernel. For Manjaro Linux the instructions can be found here: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Manjaro_Kernels

After that enable user namespaces:

sudo sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1

To enable the user namespaces permanently:

echo 'kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1' > /etc/sysctl.d/userns.conf

Building missing dependencies

If any dependencies cannot be installed or are not sufficiently current, they have to be built from source. This will mainly affect Debian, Ubuntu, and related distributions, or RHEL where no subscription is active (e.g. Cloud VMs).

golang

Be careful to double-check that the version of golang is new enough (i.e. go version), as of January 2022 version is 1.16.x or higher is required. The current minimum required version can always be found in the go.mod file. If needed, golang kits are available at https://golang.org/dl/. Alternatively, go can be built from source as follows (it’s helpful to leave the system-go installed, to avoid having to bootstrap go:

export GOPATH=~/go
git clone https://go.googlesource.com/go $GOPATH
cd $GOPATH
cd src
./all.bash
export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH

conmon

The latest version of conmon is expected to be installed on the system. Conmon is used to monitor OCI Runtimes. To build from source, use the following:

git clone https://github.com/containers/conmon
cd conmon
export GOCACHE="$(mktemp -d)"
make
sudo make podman

runc

The latest version of runc is expected to be installed on the system. It is picked up as the default runtime by Podman. Version 1.0.0-rc4 is the minimal requirement, which is available in Ubuntu 18.04 already. To double-check, runc --version should produce at least spec: 1.0.1, otherwise build your own:

git clone https://github.com/opencontainers/runc.git $GOPATH/src/github.com/opencontainers/runc
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/opencontainers/runc
make BUILDTAGS="selinux seccomp"
sudo cp runc /usr/bin/runc

CNI plugins

Setup CNI networking

A proper description of setting up CNI networking is given in the cni README.

A basic setup for CNI networking is done by default during the installation or make processes and no further configuration is needed to start using Podman.

Add configuration

sudo mkdir -p /etc/containers
sudo curl -L -o /etc/containers/registries.conf https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/containers-common/raw/main/f/registries.conf
sudo curl -L -o /etc/containers/policy.json https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/containers-common/raw/main/f/default-policy.json

Optional packages

Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and related distributions:

(no optional packages)

Debian, Ubuntu, and related distributions:

apt-get install -y \
  libapparmor-dev

Get Source Code

First, ensure that the go version that is found first on the $PATH is 1.16.x or higher. Instruction above will help you compile newer version of Go if needed. Then we can build Podman:

git clone https://github.com/containers/podman/
cd podman
make BUILDTAGS="selinux seccomp"
sudo make install PREFIX=/usr

Build Tags

Otherwise, if you do not want to build Podman with seccomp or selinux support you can add BUILDTAGS="" when running make.

make BUILDTAGS=""
sudo make install

Podman supports optional build tags for compiling support of various features. To add build tags to the make option the BUILDTAGS variable must be set, for example:

make BUILDTAGS='seccomp apparmor'

Note that Podman does not officially support device-mapper. Thus, the exclude_graphdriver_devicemapper tag is mandatory.

Vendoring - Dependency Management

This project is using go modules for dependency management. If the CI is complaining about a pull request leaving behind an unclean state, it is very likely right about it. After changing dependencies, make sure to run make vendor to synchronize the code with the go module and repopulate the ./vendor directory.

Ansible

An Ansible Role is also available to automate the installation of the above statically linked binary on its supported OS:

sudo su -
mkdir -p ~/.ansible/roles
cd ~/.ansible/roles
git clone https://github.com/alvistack/ansible-role-podman.git podman
cd ~/.ansible/roles/podman
pip3 install --upgrade --ignore-installed --requirement requirements.txt
molecule converge
molecule verify

Configuration files

registries.conf

Man Page: registries.conf.5

/etc/containers/registries.conf

registries.conf is the configuration file which specifies which container registries should be consulted when completing image names which do not include a registry or domain portion.

Example from the Fedora containers-common package

$ cat /etc/containers/registries.conf
# For more information on this configuration file, see containers-registries.conf(5).
#
# NOTE: RISK OF USING UNQUALIFIED IMAGE NAMES
# We recommend always using fully qualified image names including the registry
# server (full dns name), namespace, image name, and tag
# (e.g., registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi:latest). Pulling by digest (i.e.,
# quay.io/repository/name@digest) further eliminates the ambiguity of tags.
# When using short names, there is always an inherent risk that the image being
# pulled could be spoofed. For example, a user wants to pull an image named
# `foobar` from a registry and expects it to come from myregistry.com. If
# myregistry.com is not first in the search list, an attacker could place a
# different `foobar` image at a registry earlier in the search list. The user
# would accidentally pull and run the attacker's image and code rather than the
# intended content. We recommend only adding registries which are completely
# trusted (i.e., registries which don't allow unknown or anonymous users to
# create accounts with arbitrary names). This will prevent an image from being
# spoofed, squatted or otherwise made insecure.  If it is necessary to use one
# of these registries, it should be added at the end of the list.
#
# # An array of host[:port] registries to try when pulling an unqualified image, in order.
unqualified-search-registries = ["registry.fedoraproject.org", "registry.access.redhat.com", "docker.io"]
#
# [[registry]]
# # The "prefix" field is used to choose the relevant [[registry]] TOML table;
# # (only) the TOML table with the longest match for the input image name
# # (taking into account namespace/repo/tag/digest separators) is used.
# #
# # If the prefix field is missing, it defaults to be the same as the "location" field.
# prefix = "example.com/foo"
#
# # If true, unencrypted HTTP as well as TLS connections with untrusted
# # certificates are allowed.
# insecure = false
#
# # If true, pulling images with matching names is forbidden.
# blocked = false
#
# # The physical location of the "prefix"-rooted namespace.
# #
# # By default, this equal to "prefix" (in which case "prefix" can be omitted
# # and the [[registry]] TOML table can only specify "location").
# #
# # Example: Given
# #   prefix = "example.com/foo"
# #   location = "internal-registry-for-example.net/bar"
# # requests for the image example.com/foo/myimage:latest will actually work with the
# # internal-registry-for-example.net/bar/myimage:latest image.
# location = "internal-registry-for-example.com/bar"
#
# # (Possibly-partial) mirrors for the "prefix"-rooted namespace.
# #
# # The mirrors are attempted in the specified order; the first one that can be
# # contacted and contains the image will be used (and if none of the mirrors contains the image,
# # the primary location specified by the "registry.location" field, or using the unmodified
# # user-specified reference, is tried last).
# #
# # Each TOML table in the "mirror" array can contain the following fields, with the same semantics
# # as if specified in the [[registry]] TOML table directly:
# # - location
# # - insecure
# [[registry.mirror]]
# location = "example-mirror-0.local/mirror-for-foo"
# [[registry.mirror]]
# location = "example-mirror-1.local/mirrors/foo"
# insecure = true
# # Given the above, a pull of example.com/foo/image:latest will try:
# # 1. example-mirror-0.local/mirror-for-foo/image:latest
# # 2. example-mirror-1.local/mirrors/foo/image:latest
# # 3. internal-registry-for-example.net/bar/image:latest
# # in order, and use the first one that exists.
#
# short-name-mode="enforcing"

[[registry]]
location="localhost:5000"
insecure=true

mounts.conf

/usr/share/containers/mounts.conf and optionally /etc/containers/mounts.conf

The mounts.conf files specify volume mount directories that are automatically mounted inside containers when executing the podman run or podman build commands. Container process can then use this content. The volume mount content does not get committed to the final image.

Usually these directories are used for passing secrets or credentials required by the package software to access remote package repositories.

For example, a mounts.conf with the line “/usr/share/rhel/secrets:/run/secrets”, the content of /usr/share/rhel/secrets directory is mounted on /run/secrets inside the container. This mountpoint allows Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions from the host to be used within the container.

Note this is not a volume mount. The content of the volumes is copied into container storage, not bind mounted directly from the host.

Example from the Fedora containers-common package:

cat /usr/share/containers/mounts.conf
/usr/share/rhel/secrets:/run/secrets

seccomp.json

/usr/share/containers/seccomp.json

seccomp.json contains the whitelist of seccomp rules to be allowed inside of containers. This file is usually provided by the containers-common package.

The link above takes you to the seccomp.json

policy.json

/etc/containers/policy.json

Man Page: policy.json.5

Example from the Fedora containers-common package:

cat /etc/containers/policy.json
{
    "default": [
        {
            "type": "insecureAcceptAnything"
        }
    ],
    "transports":
        {
            "docker-daemon":
                {
                    "": [{"type":"insecureAcceptAnything"}]
                }
        }
}