Introduction
What is this all about?
Podman is a technology, which allows you to run an arbitrary linux operating system inside something called a “container”. A “container” can be seen as a operating system, running inside another operating system like an application.
Glossar
Podman: The technology and also the main command used here (podman)
Container: A isolated operating system running as an application and sharing resources with the host system
Image: An operating system image used to run inside a container
Whats the difference to Toolbox?
Toolbox is something like a convenience wrapper around the Podman technology which makes your life easier, but also more restricted. It’s like a golden cage.
Getting started
Download the needed images
podman image pull ubuntu:19.04
This will fetch the current stable release of Ubuntu. If you omit :19.04, you will get the latest LTS Version, which is 18.04 at the time.
To show all the images you have downloaded already, use:
podman image list --all
There are many more different images available, just visit http://hub.docker.com if you need anything else - there are also preconfigured images for various needs available.
Creating something like a share
I personally like to keep my home directory clean, so i don’t like Toolbox’s approach of mapping the entire home directory into the container. We will create a new directory which we use exclusively for sharing files with the container.
mkdir ~/sharing
Create your first container
podman run --interactive --tty --name mycontainer --volume /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
--env DISPLAY --device /dev/dri --device /dev/snd --device /dev/input \
--volume /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro --volume /sysroot/home/$(whoami)/sharing:/mnt ubuntu:19.04
This will create the container and open a terminal inside this container for doing your first configuration work. But at first, let’s take a look at the parameters:
| Parameter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| run | Create the container and also run it immediatly |
| –interactive | Open a terminal for the newly created container |
| –tty | Allocate a new pseudo terminal inside the container, e.g. open stdin and stdout |
| –name mycontainer | Give the container a meaningful name |
| –volume /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix | Map the X11 Socket into the Container for X11 Access |
| –env DISPLAY | Set the DISPLAY environment variable inside the container for every interactive session |
| –device /dev/dri | Allow access to the DRI Device to provide HW accelerated 3D |
| –device /dev/snd | Allow access to the Audio Device |
| –device /dev/input | Allow access to Input Devices like Gamepads |
| –volume /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro | Map /etc/localtime to give the container the same time as the host |
| –volume /sysroot/home/$(whoami)/sharing:/mnt | Map our created share to /mnt inside the container |
| ubuntu:19.04 | The image to use |
Networking should work out of the box, as podman created a bridge on the default network interface by default. Immediatly after creation, you should have a prompt like:
root@d61c9266373d:/#
Now you can do various tasks like creating a user for you to use:
useradd -d /home/egon -s /bin/bash egon
mkdir -p /home/egon
chmod -R 700 /home/egon
chown -R egon:users /home/egon
Replace egon with your username and leave this session by typing exit
Managing your container
To verify if your container has been created successfully, use the command:
podman container list --all
This will give you something like:
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
d61c9266373d docker.io/library/ubuntu:19.04 /bin/bash 4 minutes ago Exited (0) 4 seconds ago mycontainer
9a8d31421558 docker.io/library/ubuntu:18.04 /bin/bash 5 days ago Created test
Note here the state of the container, which is in my case “Exited”. After exiting the initial shell, the container is stopped. We have to manually start the container once before we can use them - until the reboot of our host:
podman start mycontainer
… and verify if it’s really running with:
podman ps --all
… will give you:
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
d61c9266373d docker.io/library/ubuntu:19.04 /bin/bash 7 minutes ago Up 3 seconds ago mycontainer
9a8d31421558 docker.io/library/ubuntu:18.04 /bin/bash 5 days ago Created test
Using the container
Now that we have a running container, we want to do something with it. At first, open up a session inside the container:
As the use we created before:
podman exec --interactive --tty --user $(whoami) --workdir /home/$(whoami) mycontainer /bin/bash
As root:
podman exec --interactive --tty mycontainer /bin/bash
Use this session for any task you want 
A good idea is to open a root shell and update everything:
apt-get update; apt-get -y dist-upgrade
Removing the container
Containers need to be stopped in order to remove them:
podman stop mycontainer
podman rm mycontainer
Nothing is left behind.
Making it more convenient
I use the following shell script to run my container:
#!/bin/bash
CONTAINER=mycontainer
podman ps | grep $CONTAINER 2>/dev/null 1>&2
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
podman start $CONTAINER
fi
xhost +
podman exec --interactive --tty --user $(whoami) --workdir /home/$(whoami) $CONTAINER /bin/bash
At first, it will check if the container is running and start them if needed. Then it will instruct our host to allow X server connections and fire up a session in the container with my user.
Solving Problems
One common issue is with updating the files inside the container. For example, updating systemd will always be problematic and lead to various problems with APT. This mostly occurs with packages which have a deep system houskeeping and are not necessary within containers (because those things are managed by the host)
To prevent such packages from updating, you have to mark it. As root, execute the following commands:
apt-mark hold libsystemd0
apt-mark hold libsystemd0:i386
apt-mark hold systemd
apt-mark hold systemd:i386
apt-mark hold tzdata
apt-mark hold tzdata:i386
If you already did a apt-get dist-upgrade and the system is in a bad state, you have to force-remove the half-installed package with dpkg and install it manually. But in this case, write a reply and let’s do it together