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podman-create(1) General Commands Manual podman-create(1)

NAME
podman-create - Create a new container

SYNOPSIS
podman create [options] image [command [arg ...]]

podman container create [options] image [command [arg ...]]

DESCRIPTION
Creates a writable container layer over the specified image and prepares it
for running the specified command. The container ID is then printed to STD-
OUT. This is similar to podman run -d except the container is never
started. Use the podman start container command to start the container at
any point.

The initial status of the container created with podman create is 'cre-
ated'.

Default settings for flags are defined in containers.conf. Most settings
for remote connections use the server's containers.conf, except when docu-
mented in man pages.

IMAGE
The image is specified using transport:path format. If no transport is
specified, the docker (container registry) transport is used by default.
For remote Podman, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines,
docker is the only allowed transport.

dir:path
An existing local directory path storing the manifest, layer tarballs and
signatures as individual files. This is a non-standardized format, primar-
ily useful for debugging or noninvasive container inspection.

$ podman save --format docker-dir fedora -o /tmp/fedora
$ podman create dir:/tmp/fedora echo hello

docker://docker-reference (Default)
An image reference stored in a remote container image registry. Example:
"quay.io/podman/stable:latest". The reference can include a path to a spe-
cific registry; if it does not, the registries listed in registries.conf is
queried to find a matching image. By default, credentials from podman lo-
gin (stored at $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/containers/auth.json by default) is used to
authenticate; otherwise it falls back to using credentials in
$HOME/.docker/config.json.

$ podman create registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora:latest echo hello

docker-archive:path[:docker-reference] An image stored in the docker save
formatted file. docker-reference is only used when creating such a file,
and it must not contain a digest.

$ podman save --format docker-archive fedora -o /tmp/fedora
$ podman create docker-archive:/tmp/fedora echo hello

Note: On remote clients, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) ma-
chines, this transport is not supported.

docker-daemon:docker-reference
An image in docker-reference format stored in the docker daemon internal
storage. The docker-reference can also be an image ID (docker-dae-
mon:algo:digest).

$ sudo docker pull fedora
$ sudo podman create docker-daemon:docker.io/library/fedora echo hello

Note: On remote clients, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) ma-
chines, this transport is not supported.

oci-archive:path:tag
An image in a directory compliant with the "Open Container Image Layout
Specification" at the specified path and specified with a tag.

$ podman save --format oci-archive fedora -o /tmp/fedora
$ podman create oci-archive:/tmp/fedora echo hello

Note: On remote clients, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) ma-
chines, this transport is not supported.

OPTIONS
--add-host=hostname[;hostname[;...]]:ip
Add a custom host-to-IP mapping to the container's /etc/hosts file.

The option takes one or multiple semicolon-separated hostnames to be mapped
to a single IPv4 or IPv6 address, separated by a colon. It can also be used
to overwrite the IP addresses of hostnames Podman adds to /etc/hosts by de-
fault (also see the --name and --hostname options). This option can be
specified multiple times to add additional mappings to /etc/hosts. It con-
flicts with the --no-hosts option and conflicts with no_hosts=true in con-
tainers.conf.

Instead of an IP address, the special flag host-gateway can be given. This
resolves to an IP address the container can use to connect to the host. The
IP address chosen depends on your network setup, thus there's no guarantee
that Podman can determine the host-gateway address automatically, which
will then cause Podman to fail with an error message. You can overwrite
this IP address using the host_containers_internal_ip option in contain-
ers.conf.

The host-gateway address is also used by Podman to automatically add the
host.containers.internal and host.docker.internal hostnames to /etc/hosts.
You can prevent that by either giving the --no-hosts option, or by setting
host_containers_internal_ip="none" in containers.conf. If no host-gateway
address was configured manually and Podman fails to determine the IP ad-
dress automatically, Podman will silently skip adding these internal host-
names to /etc/hosts. If Podman is running in a virtual machine using podman
machine (this includes Mac and Windows hosts), Podman will silently skip
adding the internal hostnames to /etc/hosts, unless an IP address was con-
figured manually; the internal hostnames are resolved by the gvproxy DNS
resolver instead.

Podman will use the /etc/hosts file of the host as a basis by default, i.e.
any hostname present in this file will also be present in the /etc/hosts
file of the container. A different base file can be configured using the
base_hosts_file config in containers.conf.

--annotation=key=value
Add an annotation to the container. This option can be set multiple times.

--arch=ARCH
Override the architecture, defaults to hosts, of the image to be pulled.
For example, arm. Unless overridden, subsequent lookups of the same image
in the local storage matches this architecture, regardless of the host.

--attach, -a=stdin | stdout | stderr
Attach to STDIN, STDOUT or STDERR.

In foreground mode (the default when -d is not specified), podman run can
start the process in the container and attach the console to the process's
standard input, output, and error. It can even pretend to be a TTY (this is
what most command-line executables expect) and pass along signals. The -a
option can be set for each of stdin, stdout, and stderr.

--authfile=path
Path of the authentication file. Default is ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/contain-
ers/auth.json on Linux, and $HOME/.config/containers/auth.json on Win-
dows/macOS. The file is created by podman login. If the authorization
state is not found there, $HOME/.docker/config.json is checked, which is
set using docker login.

Note: There is also the option to override the default path of the authen-
tication file by setting the REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE environment variable. This
can be done with export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE=path.

--blkio-weight=weight
Block IO relative weight. The weight is a value between 10 and 1000.

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--blkio-weight-device=device:weight
Block IO relative device weight.

--cap-add=capability
Add Linux capabilities.

Granting additional capabilities increases the privileges of the processes
running inside the container and potentially allow it to break out of con-
finement. Capabilities like CAP_SYS_ADMIN, CAP_SYS_PTRACE, CAP_MKNOD and
CAP_SYS_MODULE are particularly dangerous when they are not used within a
user namespace. Please refer to user_namespaces(7) for a more detailed ex-
planation of the interaction between user namespaces and capabilities.

Before adding any capability, review its security implications and ensure
it is really necessary for the containeras functionality. See capabili-
ties(7) for more information.

--cap-drop=capability
Drop Linux capabilities.

--cert-dir=path
Use certificates at path (*.crt, *.cert, *.key) to connect to the registry.
(Default: /etc/containers/certs.d) For details, see containers-certs.d(5).
(This option is not available with the remote Podman client, including Mac
and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines)

--cgroup-conf=KEY=VALUE
When running on cgroup v2, specify the cgroup file to write to and its
value. For example --cgroup-conf=memory.high=1073741824 sets the mem-
ory.high limit to 1GB.

--cgroup-parent=path
Path to cgroups under which the cgroup for the container is created. If the
path is not absolute, the path is considered to be relative to the cgroups
path of the init process. Cgroups are created if they do not already exist.

--cgroupns=mode
Set the cgroup namespace mode for the container.

* host: use the host's cgroup namespace inside the container.

* container:id: join the namespace of the specified container.

* private: create a new cgroup namespace.

* ns:path: join the namespace at the specified path.

If the host uses cgroups v1, the default is set to host. On cgroups v2, the
default is private.

--cgroups=how
Determines whether the container creates cgroups.

Default is enabled.

The enabled option creates a new cgroup under the cgroup-parent. The dis-
abled option forces the container to not create cgroups, and thus conflicts
with cgroup options (--cgroupns and --cgroup-parent). The no-conmon option
disables a new cgroup only for the conmon process. The split option splits
the current cgroup in two sub-cgroups: one for conmon and one for the con-
tainer payload. It is not possible to set --cgroup-parent with split.

--chrootdirs=path
Path to a directory inside the container that is treated as a chroot direc-
tory. Any Podman managed file (e.g., /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/hosts,
/etc/hostname) that is mounted into the root directory is mounted into that
location as well. Multiple directories are separated with a comma.

--cidfile=file
Write the container ID to file. The file is removed along with the con-
tainer, except when used with podman --remote run on detached containers.

--conmon-pidfile=file
Write the pid of the conmon process to a file. As conmon runs in a separate
process than Podman, this is necessary when using systemd to restart Podman
containers. (This option is not available with the remote Podman client,
including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines)

--cpu-period=limit
Set the CPU period for the Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS), which is a du-
ration in microseconds. Once the container's CPU quota is used up, it will
not be scheduled to run until the current period ends. Defaults to 100000
microseconds.

On some systems, changing the resource limits may not be allowed for non-
root users. For more details, see https://github.com/containers/pod-
man/blob/main/troubleshooting.md#26-running-containers-with-resource-lim-
its-fails-with-a-permissions-error

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--cpu-quota=limit
Limit the CPU Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) quota.

Limit the container's CPU usage. By default, containers run with the full
CPU resource. The limit is a number in microseconds. If a number is pro-
vided, the container is allowed to use that much CPU time until the CPU pe-
riod ends (controllable via --cpu-period).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--cpu-rt-period=microseconds
Limit the CPU real-time period in microseconds.

Limit the container's Real Time CPU usage. This option tells the kernel to
restrict the container's Real Time CPU usage to the period specified.

This option is only supported on cgroups V1 rootful systems.

--cpu-rt-runtime=microseconds
Limit the CPU real-time runtime in microseconds.

Limit the containers Real Time CPU usage. This option tells the kernel to
limit the amount of time in a given CPU period Real Time tasks may consume.
Ex: Period of 1,000,000us and Runtime of 950,000us means that this con-
tainer can consume 95% of available CPU and leave the remaining 5% to nor-
mal priority tasks.

The sum of all runtimes across containers cannot exceed the amount allotted
to the parent cgroup.

This option is only supported on cgroups V1 rootful systems.

--cpu-shares, -c=shares
CPU shares (relative weight).

By default, all containers get the same proportion of CPU cycles. This pro-
portion can be modified by changing the container's CPU share weighting
relative to the combined weight of all the running containers. Default
weight is 1024.

The proportion only applies when CPU-intensive processes are running. When
tasks in one container are idle, other containers can use the left-over CPU
time. The actual amount of CPU time varies depending on the number of con-
tainers running on the system.

For example, consider three containers, one has a cpu-share of 1024 and two
others have a cpu-share setting of 512. When processes in all three con-
tainers attempt to use 100% of CPU, the first container receives 50% of the
total CPU time. If a fourth container is added with a cpu-share of 1024,
the first container only gets 33% of the CPU. The remaining containers re-
ceive 16.5%, 16.5% and 33% of the CPU.

On a multi-core system, the shares of CPU time are distributed over all CPU
cores. Even if a container is limited to less than 100% of CPU time, it can
use 100% of each individual CPU core.

For example, consider a system with more than three cores. If the con-
tainer C0 is started with --cpu-shares=512 running one process, and another
container C1 with --cpu-shares=1024 running two processes, this can result
in the following division of CPU shares:

+-----+-----------+-----+--------------+
| PID | container | CPU | CPU share |
+-----+-----------+-----+--------------+
| 100 | C0 | 0 | 100% of CPU0 |
+-----+-----------+-----+--------------+
| 101 | C1 | 1 | 100% of CPU1 |
+-----+-----------+-----+--------------+
| 102 | C1 | 2 | 100% of CPU2 |
+-----+-----------+-----+--------------+

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--cpus=number
Number of CPUs. The default is 0.0 which means no limit. This is shorthand
for --cpu-period and --cpu-quota, therefore the option cannot be specified
with --cpu-period or --cpu-quota.

On some systems, changing the CPU limits may not be allowed for non-root
users. For more details, see https://github.com/containers/pod-
man/blob/main/troubleshooting.md#26-running-containers-with-resource-lim-
its-fails-with-a-permissions-error

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--cpuset-cpus=number
CPUs in which to allow execution. Can be specified as a comma-separated
list (e.g. 0,1), as a range (e.g. 0-3), or any combination thereof (e.g.
0-3,7,11-15).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--cpuset-mems=nodes
Memory nodes (MEMs) in which to allow execution (0-3, 0,1). Only effective
on NUMA systems.

If there are four memory nodes on the system (0-3), use --cpuset-mems=0,1
then processes in the container only uses memory from the first two memory
nodes.

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--creds=[username[:password]]
The [username[:password]] to use to authenticate with the registry, if re-
quired. If one or both values are not supplied, a command line prompt ap-
pears and the value can be entered. The password is entered without echo.

Note that the specified credentials are only used to authenticate against
target registries. They are not used for mirrors or when the registry gets
rewritten (see containers-registries.conf(5)); to authenticate against
those consider using a containers-auth.json(5) file.

--decryption-key=key[:passphrase]
The [key[:passphrase]] to be used for decryption of images. Key can point
to keys and/or certificates. Decryption is tried with all keys. If the key
is protected by a passphrase, it is required to be passed in the argument
and omitted otherwise.

--device=host-device[:container-device][:permissions]
Add a host device to the container. Optional permissions parameter can be
used to specify device permissions by combining r for read, w for write,
and m for mknod(2).

Example: --device=/dev/sdc:/dev/xvdc:rwm.

Note: if host-device is a symbolic link then it is resolved first. The
container only stores the major and minor numbers of the host device.

Podman may load kernel modules required for using the specified device. The
devices that Podman loads modules for when necessary are: /dev/fuse.

In rootless mode, the new device is bind mounted in the container from the
host rather than Podman creating it within the container space. Because the
bind mount retains its SELinux label on SELinux systems, the container can
get permission denied when accessing the mounted device. Modify SELinux
settings to allow containers to use all device labels via the following
command:

$ sudo setsebool -P container_use_devices=true

Note: if the user only has access rights via a group, accessing the device
from inside a rootless container fails. Use the --group-add keep-groups
flag to pass the user's supplementary group access into the container.

--device-cgroup-rule="type major:minor mode"
Add a rule to the cgroup allowed devices list. The rule is expected to be
in the format specified in the Linux kernel documentation admin-
guide/cgroup-v1/devices: - type: a (all), c (char), or b (block); - major
and minor: either a number, or * for all; - mode: a composition of r
(read), w (write), and m (mknod(2)).

--device-read-bps=path:rate
Limit read rate (in bytes per second) from a device (e.g. --device-read-
bps=/dev/sda:1mb).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--device-read-iops=path:rate
Limit read rate (in IO operations per second) from a device (e.g. --device-
read-iops=/dev/sda:1000).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--device-write-bps=path:rate
Limit write rate (in bytes per second) to a device (e.g. --device-write-
bps=/dev/sda:1mb).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--device-write-iops=path:rate
Limit write rate (in IO operations per second) to a device (e.g. --device-
write-iops=/dev/sda:1000).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--disable-content-trust
This is a Docker-specific option to disable image verification to a con-
tainer registry and is not supported by Podman. This option is a NOOP and
provided solely for scripting compatibility.

--dns=ipaddr
Set custom DNS servers.

This option can be used to override the DNS configuration passed to the
container. Typically this is necessary when the host DNS configuration is
invalid for the container (e.g., 127.0.0.1). When this is the case the
--dns flag is necessary for every run.

The special value none can be specified to disable creation of /etc/re-
solv.conf in the container by Podman. The /etc/resolv.conf file in the im-
age is then used without changes.

Note that ipaddr may be added directly to the container's /etc/resolv.conf.
This is not guaranteed though. For example, passing a custom network whose
dns_enabled is set to true to --network will result in /etc/resolv.conf
only referring to the aardvark-dns server. aardvark-dns then forwards to
the supplied ipaddr for all non-container name queries.

This option cannot be combined with --network that is set to none or con-
tainer:id.

--dns-option=option
Set custom DNS options. Invalid if using --dns-option with --network that
is set to none or container:id.

--dns-search=domain
Set custom DNS search domains. Invalid if using --dns-search with --network
that is set to none or container:id. Use --dns-search=. to remove the
search domain.

--entrypoint="command" | '["command", arg1 , ...]'
Override the default ENTRYPOINT from the image.

The ENTRYPOINT of an image is similar to a COMMAND because it specifies
what executable to run when the container starts, but it is (purposely)
more difficult to override. The ENTRYPOINT gives a container its default
nature or behavior. When the ENTRYPOINT is set, the container runs as if it
were that binary, complete with default options. More options can be passed
in via the COMMAND. But, if a user wants to run something else inside the
container, the --entrypoint option allows a new ENTRYPOINT to be specified.

Specify multi option commands in the form of a JSON string.

--env, -e=env
Set environment variables.

This option allows arbitrary environment variables that are available for
the process to be launched inside of the container. If an environment vari-
able is specified without a value, Podman checks the host environment for a
value and set the variable only if it is set on the host. As a special
case, if an environment variable ending in * is specified without a value,
Podman searches the host environment for variables starting with the prefix
and adds those variables to the container.

See <#environment> note below for precedence and examples.

--env-file=file
Read in a line-delimited file of environment variables.

See <#environment> note below for precedence and examples.

--env-host
Use host environment inside of the container. See Environment note below
for precedence. (This option is not available with the remote Podman
client, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines)

--env-merge=env
Preprocess default environment variables for the containers. For example if
image contains environment variable hello=world user can preprocess it us-
ing --env-merge hello=${hello}-some so new value is hello=world-some.

Please note that if the environment variable hello is not present in the
image, then it'll be replaced by an empty string and so using --env-merge
hello=${hello}-some would result in the new value of hello=-some, notice
the leading - delimiter.

--expose=port[/protocol]
Expose a port or a range of ports (e.g. --expose=3300-3310). The protocol
can be tcp, udp or sctp and if not given tcp is assumed. This option
matches the EXPOSE instruction for image builds and has no effect on the
actual networking rules unless -P/--publish-all is used to forward to all
exposed ports from random host ports. To forward specific ports from the
host into the container use the -p/--publish option instead.

--gidmap=[flags]container_uid:from_uid[:amount]
Run the container in a new user namespace using the supplied GID mapping.
This option conflicts with the --userns and --subgidname options. This op-
tion provides a way to map host GIDs to container GIDs in the same way as
--uidmap maps host UIDs to container UIDs. For details see --uidmap.

Note: the --gidmap option cannot be called in conjunction with the --pod
option as a gidmap cannot be set on the container level when in a pod.

--gpus=ENTRY
GPU devices to add to the container ('all' to pass all GPUs) Currently only
Nvidia devices are supported.

--group-add=group | keep-groups
Assign additional groups to the primary user running within the container
process.

* keep-groups is a special flag that tells Podman to keep the supplementary
group access.

Allows container to use the user's supplementary group access. If file sys-
tems or devices are only accessible by the rootless user's group, this flag
tells the OCI runtime to pass the group access into the container. Cur-
rently only available with the crun OCI runtime. Note: keep-groups is ex-
clusive, other groups cannot be specified with this flag. (Not available
for remote commands, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines)

--group-entry=ENTRY
Customize the entry that is written to the /etc/group file within the con-
tainer when --user is used.

The variables $GROUPNAME, $GID, and $USERLIST are automatically replaced
with their value at runtime if present.

--health-cmd="command" | '["command", arg1 , ...]'
Set or alter a healthcheck command for a container. The command is a com-
mand to be executed inside the container that determines the container
health. The command is required for other healthcheck options to be ap-
plied. A value of none disables existing healthchecks.

Multiple options can be passed in the form of a JSON array; otherwise, the
command is interpreted as an argument to /bin/sh -c.

Note: The default values are used even if healthcheck is configured in the
image.

--health-interval=interval
Set an interval for the healthchecks. An interval of disable results in no
automatic timer setup. The default is 30s.

Note: This parameter will overwrite related healthcheck configuration from
the image.

--health-log-destination=directory_path
Set the destination of the HealthCheck log. Directory path, local or
events_logger (local use container state file) (Default: local)

* local: (default) HealthCheck logs are stored in overlay containers. (For
example: $runroot/healthcheck.log)

* directory: creates a log file named <container-ID>-healthcheck.log with
HealthCheck logs in the specified directory.

* events_logger: The log will be written with logging mechanism set by
events_logger. It also saves the log to a default directory, for perfor-
mance on a system with a large number of logs.

--health-max-log-count=number of stored logs
Set maximum number of attempts in the HealthCheck log file. ('0' value
means an infinite number of attempts in the log file) (Default: 5 attempts)

--health-max-log-size=size of stored logs
Set maximum length in characters of stored HealthCheck log. ("0" value
means an infinite log length) (Default: 500 characters)

--health-on-failure=action
Action to take once the container transitions to an unhealthy state. The
default is none.

* none: Take no action.

* kill: Kill the container.

* restart: Restart the container. Do not combine the restart action with
the --restart flag. When running inside of a systemd unit, consider us-
ing the kill or stop action instead to make use of systemd's restart pol-
icy.

* stop: Stop the container.

--health-retries=retries
The number of retries allowed before a healthcheck is considered to be un-
healthy. The default value is 3.

Note: This parameter can overwrite the healthcheck configuration from the
image.

--health-start-period=period
The initialization time needed for a container to bootstrap. The value can
be expressed in time format like 2m3s. The default value is 0s.

Note: The health check command is executed as soon as a container is
started, if the health check is successful the container's health state
will be updated to healthy. However, if the health check fails, the health
state will stay as starting until either the health check is successful or
until the --health-start-period time is over. If the health check command
fails after the --health-start-period time is over, the health state will
be updated to unhealthy. The health check command is executed periodically
based on the value of --health-interval.

Note: This parameter will overwrite related healthcheck configuration from
the image.

--health-startup-cmd="command" | '["command", arg1 , ...]'
Set a startup healthcheck command for a container. This command is executed
inside the container and is used to gate the regular healthcheck. When the
startup command succeeds, the regular healthcheck begins and the startup
healthcheck ceases. Optionally, if the command fails for a set number of
attempts, the container is restarted. A startup healthcheck can be used to
ensure that containers with an extended startup period are not marked as
unhealthy until they are fully started. Startup healthchecks can only be
used when a regular healthcheck (from the container's image or the
--health-cmd option) is also set.

--health-startup-interval=interval
Set an interval for the startup healthcheck. An interval of disable results
in no automatic timer setup. The default is 30s.

--health-startup-retries=retries
The number of attempts allowed before the startup healthcheck restarts the
container. If set to 0, the container is never restarted. The default is 0.

--health-startup-success=retries
The number of successful runs required before the startup healthcheck suc-
ceeds and the regular healthcheck begins. A value of 0 means that any suc-
cess begins the regular healthcheck. The default is 0.

--health-startup-timeout=timeout
The maximum time a startup healthcheck command has to complete before it is
marked as failed. The value can be expressed in a time format like 2m3s.
The default value is 30s.

--health-timeout=timeout
The maximum time allowed to complete the healthcheck before an interval is
considered failed. Like start-period, the value can be expressed in a time
format such as 1m22s. The default value is 30s.

Note: A timeout marks the healthcheck as failed. If the healthcheck command
itself runs longer than the specified timeout, it will be sent a SIGKILL
signal.

Note: This parameter will overwrite related healthcheck configuration from
the image.

--help
Print usage statement

--hostname, -h=name
Set the container's hostname inside the container.

This option can only be used with a private UTS namespace --uts=private
(default). If --pod is given and the pod shares the same UTS namespace (de-
fault), the pod's hostname is used. The given hostname is also added to the
/etc/hosts file using the container's primary IP address (also see the
--add-host option).

--hosts-file=path | none | image
Base file to create the /etc/hosts file inside the container. This must ei-
ther be an absolute path to a file on the host system, or one of the fol-
lowing special flags:
"" Follow the base_hosts_file configuration in containers.conf (the
default)
none Do not use a base file (i.e. start with an empty file)
image Use the container image's /etc/hosts file as base file

--hostuser=name
Add a user account to /etc/passwd from the host to the container. The User-
name or UID must exist on the host system.

--http-proxy
By default proxy environment variables are passed into the container if set
for the Podman process. This can be disabled by setting the value to false.
The environment variables passed in include http_proxy, https_proxy,
ftp_proxy, no_proxy, and also the upper case versions of those. This option
is only needed when the host system must use a proxy but the container does
not use any proxy. Proxy environment variables specified for the container
in any other way overrides the values that have been passed through from
the host. (Other ways to specify the proxy for the container include pass-
ing the values with the --env flag, or hard coding the proxy environment at
container build time.) When used with the remote client it uses the proxy
environment variables that are set on the server process.

Defaults to true.

--image-volume=bind | tmpfs | ignore
Tells Podman how to handle the builtin image volumes. Default is bind.

* bind: An anonymous named volume is created and mounted into the con-
tainer.

* tmpfs: The volume is mounted onto the container as a tmpfs, which allows
the users to create content that disappears when the container is
stopped.

* ignore: All volumes are just ignored and no action is taken.

--init
Run an init inside the container that forwards signals and reaps processes.
The container-init binary is mounted at /run/podman-init. Mounting over
/run breaks container execution.

--init-ctr=type
(Pods only). When using pods, create an init style container, which is run
after the infra container is started but before regular pod containers are
started. Init containers are useful for running setup operations for the
pod's applications.

Valid values for init-ctr type are always or once. The always value means
the container runs with each and every pod start, whereas the once value
means the container only runs once when the pod is started and then the
container is removed.

Init containers are only run on pod start. Restarting a pod does not exe-
cute any init containers. Furthermore, init containers can only be created
in a pod when that pod is not running.

--init-path=path
Path to the container-init binary.

--interactive, -i
When set to true, make stdin available to the contained process. If false,
the stdin of the contained process is empty and immediately closed.

If attached, stdin is piped to the contained process. If detached, reading
stdin will block until later attached.

Caveat: Podman will consume input from stdin as soon as it becomes avail-
able, even if the contained process doesn't request it.

--ip=ipv4
Specify a static IPv4 address for the container, for example 10.88.64.128.
This option can only be used if the container is joined to only a single
network - i.e., --network=network-name is used at most once - and if the
container is not joining another container's network namespace via --net-
work=container:id. The address must be within the network's IP address
pool (default 10.88.0.0/16).

To specify multiple static IP addresses per container, set multiple net-
works using the --network option with a static IP address specified for
each using the ip mode for that option.

--ip6=ipv6
Specify a static IPv6 address for the container, for example
fd46:db93:aa76:ac37::10. This option can only be used if the container is
joined to only a single network - i.e., --network=network-name is used at
most once - and if the container is not joining another container's network
namespace via --network=container:id. The address must be within the net-
work's IPv6 address pool.

To specify multiple static IPv6 addresses per container, set multiple net-
works using the --network option with a static IPv6 address specified for
each using the ip6 mode for that option.

--ipc=ipc
Set the IPC namespace mode for a container. The default is to create a pri-
vate IPC namespace.

* "": Use Podman's default, defined in containers.conf.

* container:id: reuses another container's shared memory, semaphores, and
message queues

* host: use the host's shared memory, semaphores, and message queues inside
the container. Note: the host mode gives the container full access to lo-
cal shared memory and is therefore considered insecure.

* none: private IPC namespace, with /dev/shm not mounted.

* ns:path: path to an IPC namespace to join.

* private: private IPC namespace.

* shareable: private IPC namespace with a possibility to share it with
other containers.

--label, -l=key=value
Add metadata to a container.

--label-file=file
Read in a line-delimited file of labels.

--link-local-ip=ip
Not implemented.

--log-driver=driver
Logging driver for the container. Currently available options are k8s-file,
journald, none, passthrough and passthrough-tty, with json-file aliased to
k8s-file for scripting compatibility. (Default journald).

The podman info command below displays the default log-driver for the sys-
tem.

$ podman info --format '{{ .Host.LogDriver }}'
journald

The passthrough driver passes down the standard streams (stdin, stdout,
stderr) to the container. It is not allowed with the remote Podman client,
including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines, and on a tty, since it
is vulnerable to attacks via TIOCSTI.

The passthrough-tty driver is the same as passthrough except that it also
allows it to be used on a TTY if the user really wants it.

--log-opt=name=value
Logging driver specific options.

Set custom logging configuration. The following *name*s are supported:

path: specify a path to the log file
(e.g. --log-opt path=/var/log/container/mycontainer.json);

max-size: specify a max size of the log file
(e.g. --log-opt max-size=10mb);

tag: specify a custom log tag for the container
(e.g. --log-opt tag="{{.ImageName}}". It supports the same keys as
podman inspect --format. This option is currently supported only by the
journald log driver.

--mac-address=address
Container network interface MAC address (e.g. 92:d0:c6:0a:29:33) This op-
tion can only be used if the container is joined to only a single network -
i.e., --network=network-name is used at most once - and if the container is
not joining another container's network namespace via --network=con-
tainer:id.

Remember that the MAC address in an Ethernet network must be unique. The
IPv6 link-local address is based on the device's MAC address according to
RFC4862.

To specify multiple static MAC addresses per container, set multiple net-
works using the --network option with a static MAC address specified for
each using the mac mode for that option.

--memory, -m=number[unit]
Memory limit. A unit can be b (bytes), k (kibibytes), m (mebibytes), or g
(gibibytes).

Allows the memory available to a container to be constrained. If the host
supports swap memory, then the -m memory setting can be larger than physi-
cal RAM. If a limit of 0 is specified (not using -m), the container's mem-
ory is not limited. The actual limit may be rounded up to a multiple of the
operating system's page size (the value is very large, that's millions of
trillions).

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--memory-reservation=number[unit]
Memory soft limit. A unit can be b (bytes), k (kibibytes), m (mebibytes),
or g (gibibytes).

After setting memory reservation, when the system detects memory contention
or low memory, containers are forced to restrict their consumption to their
reservation. So always set the value below --memory, otherwise the hard
limit takes precedence. By default, memory reservation is the same as mem-
ory limit.

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--memory-swap=number[unit]
A limit value equal to memory plus swap. A unit can be b (bytes), k
(kibibytes), m (mebibytes), or g (gibibytes).

Must be used with the -m (--memory) flag. The argument value must be
larger than that of
-m (--memory) By default, it is set to double the value of --memory.

Set number to -1 to enable unlimited swap.

This option is not supported on cgroups V1 rootless systems.

--memory-swappiness=number
Tune a container's memory swappiness behavior. Accepts an integer between 0
and 100.

This flag is only supported on cgroups V1 rootful systems.

--mount=type=TYPE,TYPE-SPECIFIC-OPTION[,...]
Attach a filesystem mount to the container.

Current supported mount TYPEs are artifact, bind, devpts, glob, image,
ramfs, tmpfs and volume.

Options common to all mount types:

* src, source: mount source spec for bind, glob, and volume. Mandatory for
artifact, bind, glob, image and volume.

* dst, dest, destination, target: mount destination spec.

When source globs are specified without the destination directory, the
files and directories are mounted with their complete path within the con-
tainer. When the destination is specified, the files and directories match-
ing the glob on the base file name on the destination directory are
mounted. The option type=glob,src=/foo*,destination=/tmp/bar tells con-
tainer engines to mount host files matching /foo* to the /tmp/bar/ direc-
tory in the container.

Options specific to type=artifact:

* digest: If the artifact source contains multiple blobs a digest can be
specified to only mount the one specific blob with the digest.

* title: If the artifact source contains multiple blobs a title can be set
which is compared against org.opencontainers.image.title annotation.

* name: This can be used to overwrite the filename we use inside the con-
tainer for mounting. On a single blob artifact the name is used as is if
dst is a directory and otherwise ignored. With a multi blob artifact the
name will be used with an index suffix <name>-x where x is the layer in-
dex in the artifact starting with 0.

The src argument contains the name of the artifact, which must already ex-
ist locally. The dst argument contains the target path, if the path in the
container is a directory the blob title (org.opencontainers.image.title an-
notation) will be used as filename and joined to the path. If the annota-
tion does not exist the digest will be used as filename instead. This re-
sults in all blobs of the artifact mounted into the container at the given
path.

However, if the dst path is an existing file in the container, then the
blob will be mounted directly on it. This only works when the artifact con-
tains a single blob or when either digest or title are specified.

If the dst path does not already exist in the container then if the arti-
fact contains a single blob it behaves like existing file case and mounts
directly to that path. If the artifact has more than one blob it works
like the existing directory case and mounts each blob as file within the
dst path.

Options specific to type=volume:

* ro, readonly: true or false (default if unspecified: false).

* U, chown: true or false (default if unspecified: false). Recursively
change the owner and group of the source volume based on the UID and GID
of the container.

* subpath: Mount only a specific subpath within the volume, instead of the
whole volume.

* idmap: If specified, create an idmapped mount to the target user name-
space in the container. The idmap option is only supported by Podman in
rootful mode. The Linux kernel does not allow the use of idmapped file
systems for unprivileged users. The idmap option supports a custom map-
ping that can be different than the user namespace used by the container.
The mapping can be specified after the idmap option like:
idmap=uids=0-1-10#10-11-10;gids=0-100-10. For each triplet, the first
value is the start of the backing file system IDs that are mapped to the
second value on the host. The length of this mapping is given in the
third value. Multiple ranges are separated with #. If the specified
mapping is prepended with a '@', then the mapping is considered relative
to the container user namespace. The host ID for the mapping is changed
to account for the relative position of the container user in the con-
tainer user namespace.

Options specific to type=image:

* rw, readwrite: true or false (default if unspecified: false).

* subpath: Mount only a specific path within the image, instead of the
whole image.

Options specific to bind and glob:

* ro, readonly: true or false (default if unspecified: false).

* bind-propagation: shared, slave, private, unbindable, rshared, rslave,
runbindable, or rprivate (default).[1] <#Footnote1> See also mount(2).

* bind-nonrecursive: do not set up a recursive bind mount. By default it is
recursive.

* relabel: shared, private.

* idmap: true or false (default if unspecified: false). If true, create an
idmapped mount to the target user namespace in the container. The idmap
option is only supported by Podman in rootful mode.

* U, chown: true or false (default if unspecified: false). Recursively
change the owner and group of the source volume based on the UID and GID
of the container.

* no-dereference: do not dereference symlinks but copy the link source into
the mount destination.

Options specific to type=tmpfs and ramfs:

* ro, readonly: true or false (default if unspecified: false).

* tmpfs-size: Size of the tmpfs/ramfs mount, in bytes. Unlimited by default
in Linux.

* tmpfs-mode: Octal file mode of the tmpfs/ramfs (e.g. 700 or 0700.).

* tmpcopyup: Enable copyup from the image directory at the same location to
the tmpfs/ramfs. Used by default.

* noatime: Disable updating file access times when the file is read.

* notmpcopyup: Disable copying files from the image to the tmpfs/ramfs.

* U, chown: true or false (default if unspecified: false). Set the uid and
gid options for the tmpfs filesystem based on the UID and GID of the con-
tainer. This is not recursive.

Options specific to type=devpts:

* uid: numeric UID of the file owner (default: 0).

* gid: numeric GID of the file owner (default: 0).

* mode: octal permission mask for the file (default: 600).

* max: maximum number of PTYs (default: 1048576).

Examples:

* type=bind,source=/path/on/host,destination=/path/in/container

* type=bind,src=/path/on/host,dst=/path/in/container,relabel=shared

* type=bind,src=/path/on/host,dst=/path/in/container,relabel=shared,U=true

* type=devpts,destination=/dev/pts

* type=glob,src=/usr/lib/libfoo*,destination=/usr/lib,ro=true

* type=image,source=fedora,destination=/fedora-image,rw=true

* type=ramfs,tmpfs-size=512M,destination=/path/in/container

* type=tmpfs,tmpfs-size=512M,destination=/path/in/container

* type=tmpfs,destination=/path/in/container,noswap

* type=artifact,src=quay.io/libpod/testartifact:20250206-single,dst=/data

* type=artifact,src=quay.io/libpod/testarti-
fact:20250206-multi,dst=/data,title=test1

* type=volume,src=test_vol,dst=/data,subpath=/code/docs

--name=name
Assign a name to the container.

The operator can identify a container in three ways:

* UUID long identifier
(af78375b1c487e03c9438c729345e54db9d20cfa2ac1fc3494b6eb60872e74778a);

* UUID short identifier (af78375b1c487a);

* Name (ajonaha).

Podman generates a UUID for each container, and if no name is assigned to
the container using --name, Podman generates a random string name. The name
can be useful as a more human-friendly way to identify containers. This
works for both background and foreground containers. The container's name
is also added to the /etc/hosts file using the container's primary IP ad-
dress (also see the --add-host option).

--network=mode, --net
Set the network mode for the container.

Valid mode values are:

* bridge[:OPTIONS,...]: Create a network stack on the default bridge. This
is the default for rootful containers. It is possible to specify these
additional options:

* alias=name: Add network-scoped alias for the container.

* ip=IPv4: Specify a static IPv4 address for this container.

* ip6=IPv6: Specify a static IPv6 address for this container.

* mac=MAC: Specify a static MAC address for this container.

* interface_name=name: Specify a name for the created network interface
inside the container.

* host_interface_name=name: Specify a name for the created network inter-
face outside the container.

Any other options will be passed through to netavark without validation.
This can be useful to pass arguments to netavark plugins.

For example, to set a static ipv4 address and a static mac address, use
--network bridge:ip=10.88.0.10,mac=44:33:22:11:00:99.

* <network name or ID>[:OPTIONS,...]: Connect to a user-defined network;
this is the network name or ID from a network created by podman network
create. It is possible to specify the same options described under the
bridge mode above. Use the --network option multiple times to specify ad-
ditional networks.
For backwards compatibility it is also possible to specify comma-sepa-
rated networks on the first --network argument, however this prevents you
from using the options described under the bridge section above.

* none: Create a network namespace for the container but do not configure
network interfaces for it, thus the container has no network connectiv-
ity.

* container:id: Reuse another container's network stack.

* host: Use the host's network namespace for the container instead of cre-
ating an isolated namespace. Warning: This gives the container full ac-
cess to abstract Unix domain sockets and to TCP/UDP sockets bound to lo-
calhost. Since these mechanisms are often used to prevent access to sen-
sitive system services, isolating them from access by external entities,
use of this option may be considered a security vulnerability.

* ns:path: Path to a network namespace to join.

* private: Create a new namespace for the container. This uses the bridge
mode for rootful containers and slirp4netns for rootless ones.

* slirp4netns[:OPTIONS,...]: use slirp4netns(1) to create a user network
stack. It is possible to specify these additional options, they can also
be set with network_cmd_options in containers.conf:

* allow_host_loopback=true|false: Allow slirp4netns to reach the host
loopback IP (default is 10.0.2.2 or the second IP from slirp4netns cidr
subnet when changed, see the cidr option below). The default is false.

* mtu=MTU: Specify the MTU to use for this network. (Default is 65520).

* cidr=CIDR: Specify ip range to use for this network. (Default is
10.0.2.0/24).

* enable_ipv6=true|false: Enable IPv6. Default is true. (Required for
outbound_addr6).

* outbound_addr=INTERFACE: Specify the outbound interface slirp binds to
(ipv4 traffic only).

* outbound_addr=IPv4: Specify the outbound ipv4 address slirp binds to.

* outbound_addr6=INTERFACE: Specify the outbound interface slirp binds to
(ipv6 traffic only).

* outbound_addr6=IPv6: Specify the outbound ipv6 address slirp binds to.

* port_handler=rootlesskit: Use rootlesskit for port forwarding. Default.
Note: Rootlesskit changes the source IP address of incoming packets to
an IP address in the container network namespace, usually 10.0.2.100.
If the application requires the real source IP address, e.g. web server
logs, use the slirp4netns port handler. The rootlesskit port handler is
also used for rootless containers when connected to user-defined net-
works.

* port_handler=slirp4netns: Use the slirp4netns port forwarding, it is
slower than rootlesskit but preserves the correct source IP address.
This port handler cannot be used for user-defined networks.

* pasta[:OPTIONS,...]: use pasta(1) to create a user-mode networking stack.
This is the default for rootless containers and only supported in root-
less mode.
By default, IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and routes, as well as the pod inter-
face name, are copied from the host. Port forwarding preserves the origi-
nal source IP address. Options described in pasta(1) can be specified as
comma-separated arguments.
In terms of pasta(1) options, --config-net is given by default, in order
to configure networking when the container is started, and --no-map-gw is
also assumed by default, to avoid direct access from container to host
using the gateway address. The latter can be overridden by passing --map-
gw in the pasta-specific options (despite not being an actual pasta(1)
option).
For better integration with DNS handling, --dns-forward 169.254.1.1 is
passed, and this address is added to resolv.conf(5) as first resolver. It
is possible to pass --dns-forward explicitly in case a different IP ad-
dress should be used. To make the host.containers.internal /etc/hosts
entry work and allow connections to the host, --map-guest-addr
169.254.1.2 is passed. Again, it can be set explicitly to choose a dif-
ferent IP address.
Also, -t none and -u none are passed if, respectively, no TCP or UDP port
forwarding from host to container is configured (via Podman's --publish
or by passing the pasta -t/-u options directly), to disable automatic
port forwarding based on bound ports. Similarly, -T none and -U none are
given to disable the same functionality from container to host.
All options can also be set in containers.conf(5); see the pasta_options
key under the network section in that file.
Some examples:

* pasta:--map-gw: Allow the container to directly reach the host using
the gateway address.

* pasta:--mtu,1500: Specify a 1500 bytes MTU for the tap interface in the
container.

* pasta:--ipv4-only,-a,10.0.2.0,-n,24,-g,10.0.2.2,--dns-for-
ward,10.0.2.3,-m,1500,--no-ndp,--no-dhcpv6,--no-dhcp, equivalent to de-
fault slirp4netns(1) options: disable IPv6, assign 10.0.2.0/24 to the
tap0 interface in the container, with gateway 10.0.2.3, enable DNS for-
warder reachable at 10.0.2.3, set MTU to 1500 bytes, disable NDP,
DHCPv6 and DHCP support.

* pasta:-I,tap0,--ipv4-only,-a,10.0.2.0,-n,24,-g,10.0.2.2,--dns-for-
ward,10.0.2.3,--no-ndp,--no-dhcpv6,--no-dhcp, equivalent to default
slirp4netns(1) options with Podman overrides: same as above, but leave
the MTU to 65520 bytes

* pasta:-t,auto,-u,auto,-T,auto,-U,auto: enable automatic port forwarding
based on observed bound ports from both host and container sides

* pasta:-T,5201: enable forwarding of TCP port 5201 from container to
host, using the loopback interface instead of the tap interface for im-
proved performance

Invalid if using --dns, --dns-option, or --dns-search with --network set to
none or container:id.

If used together with --pod, the container does not join the pod's network
namespace.

--network-alias=alias
Add a network-scoped alias for the container, setting the alias for all
networks that the container joins. To set a name only for a specific net-
work, use the alias option as described under the --network option. If the
network has DNS enabled (podman network inspect -f {{.DNSEnabled}} <name>),
these aliases can be used for name resolution on the given network. This
option can be specified multiple times. NOTE: When using CNI a container
only has access to aliases on the first network that it joins. This limita-
tion does not exist with netavark/aardvark-dns.

--no-healthcheck
Disable any defined healthchecks for container.

--no-hostname
Do not create the /etc/hostname file in the containers.

By default, Podman manages the /etc/hostname file, adding the container's
own hostname. When the --no-hostname option is set, the image's /etc/host-
name will be preserved unmodified if it exists.

--no-hosts
Do not modify the /etc/hosts file in the container.

Podman assumes control over the container's /etc/hosts file by default and
adds entries for the container's name (see --name option) and hostname (see
--hostname option), the internal host.containers.internal and
host.docker.internal hosts, as well as any hostname added using the --add-
host option. Refer to the --add-host option for details. Passing --no-hosts
disables this, so that the image's /etc/hosts file is kept unmodified. The
same can be achieved globally by setting no_hosts=true in containers.conf.

This option conflicts with --add-host.

--oom-kill-disable
Whether to disable OOM Killer for the container or not.

This flag is not supported on cgroups V2 systems.

--oom-score-adj=num
Tune the host's OOM preferences for containers (accepts values from -1000
to 1000).

When running in rootless mode, the specified value can't be lower than the
oom_score_adj for the current process. In this case, the oom-score-adj is
clamped to the current process value.

--os=OS
Override the OS, defaults to hosts, of the image to be pulled. For example,
windows. Unless overridden, subsequent lookups of the same image in the
local storage matches this OS, regardless of the host.

--passwd-entry=ENTRY
Customize the entry that is written to the /etc/passwd file within the con-
tainer when --passwd is used.

The variables $USERNAME, $UID, $GID, $NAME, $HOME are automatically re-
placed with their value at runtime.

--personality=persona
Personality sets the execution domain via Linux personality(2).

--pid=mode
Set the PID namespace mode for the container. The default is to create a
private PID namespace for the container.

* container:id: join another container's PID namespace;

* host: use the host's PID namespace for the container. Note the host mode
gives the container full access to local PID and is therefore considered
insecure;

* ns:path: join the specified PID namespace;

* private: create a new namespace for the container (default).

--pidfile=path
When the pidfile location is specified, the container process' PID is writ-
ten to the pidfile. (This option is not available with the remote Podman
client, including Mac and Windows (excluding WSL2) machines) If the pidfile
option is not specified, the container process' PID is written to /run/con-
tainers/storage/${storage-driver}-containers/$CID/userdata/pidfile.

After the container is started, the location for the pidfile can be discov-
ered with the following podman inspect command:

$ podman inspect --format '{{ .PidFile }}' $CID
/run/containers/storage/${storage-driver}-containers/$CID/userdata/pidfile

--pids-limit=limit
Tune the container's pids limit. Set to -1 to have unlimited pids for the
container. The default is 2048 on systems that support "pids" cgroup con-
troller.

--platform=OS/ARCH
Specify the platform for selecting the image. (Conflicts with --arch and
--os) The --platform option can be used to override the current architec-
ture and operating system. Unless overridden, subsequent lookups of the
same image in the local storage matches this platform, regardless of the
host.

--pod=name
Run container in an existing pod. Podman makes the pod automatically if the
pod name is prefixed with new:. To make a pod with more granular options,
use the podman pod create command before creating a container. When a con-
tainer is run with a pod with an infra-container, the infra-container is
started first.

--pod-id-file=file
Run container in an existing pod and read the pod's ID from the specified
file. When a container is run within a pod which has an infra-container,
the infra-container starts first.

--privileged
Give extended privileges to this container. The default is false.

By default, Podman containers are unprivileged (=false) and cannot, for ex-
ample, modify parts of the operating system. This is because by default a
container is only allowed limited access to devices. A "privileged" con-
tainer is given the same access to devices as the user launching the con-
tainer, with the exception of virtual consoles (/dev/tty\d+) when running
in systemd mode (--systemd=always).

A privileged container turns off the security features that isolate the
container from the host. Dropped Capabilities, limited devices, read-only
mount points, Apparmor/SELinux separation, and Seccomp filters are all dis-
abled. Due to the disabled security features, the privileged field should
almost never be set as containers can easily break out of confinement.

Containers running in a user namespace (e.g., rootless containers) cannot
have more privileges than the user that launched them.

--publish, -p=[[ip:][hostPort]:]containerPort[/protocol]
Publish a container's port, or range of ports, to the host.

Both hostPort and containerPort can be specified as a range of ports. When
specifying ranges for both, the number of container ports in the range must
match the number of host ports in the range.

If host IP is set to 0.0.0.0 or not set at all, the port is bound on all
IPs on the host.

By default, Podman publishes TCP ports. To publish a UDP port instead, give
udp as protocol. To publish both TCP and UDP ports, set --publish twice,
with tcp, and udp as protocols respectively. Rootful containers can also
publish ports using the sctp protocol.

Host port does not have to be specified (e.g. podman run -p 127.0.0.1::80).
If it is not, the container port is randomly assigned a port on the host.

Use podman port to see the actual mapping: podman port $CONTAINER $CONTAIN-
ERPORT.

Port publishing is only supported for containers utilizing their own net-
work namespace through bridge networks, or the pasta and slirp4netns net-
work modes.

Note: If a container runs within a pod, it is not necessary to publish the
port for the containers in the pod. The port must only be published by the
pod itself. Pod network stacks act like the network stack on the host -
when there are a variety of containers in the pod, and programs in the con-
tainer, all sharing a single interface and IP address, and associated
ports. If one container binds to a port, no other container can use that
port within the pod while it is in use. Containers in the pod can also com-
municate over localhost by having one container bind to localhost in the
pod, and another connect to that port.

--publish-all, -P
Publish all exposed ports to random ports on the host interfaces. The de-
fault is false.

When set to true, publish all exposed ports to the host interfaces. If the
operator uses -P (or -p) then Podman makes the exposed port accessible on
the host and the ports are available to any client that can reach the host.

When using this option, Podman binds any exposed port to a random port on
the host within an ephemeral port range defined by
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range. To find the mapping between the
host ports and the exposed ports, use podman port.

--pull=policy
Pull image policy. The default is missing.

* always: Always pull the image and throw an error if the pull fails.

* missing: Pull the image only when the image is not in the local contain-
ers storage. Throw an error if no image is found and the pull fails.

* never: Never pull the image but use the one from the local containers
storage. Throw an error if no image is found.

* newer: Pull if the image on the registry is newer than the one in the lo-
cal containers storage. An image is considered to be newer when the di-
gests are different. Comparing the time stamps is prone to errors. Pull
errors are suppressed if a local image was found.

--quiet, -q
Suppress output information when pulling images

--rdt-class=intel-rdt-class-of-service
Rdt-class sets the class of service (CLOS or COS) for the container to run
in. Based on the Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) feature that is part of
Intel's Resource Director Technology (RDT) feature set, all container
processes will run within the pre-configured COS, representing a part of
the cache. The COS has to be created and configured using a pseudo file
system (usually mounted at /sys/fs/resctrl) that the resctrl kernel driver
provides. Assigning the container to a COS requires root privileges and
thus doesn't work in a rootless environment. Currently, the feature is only
supported using runc as a runtime. See <https://docs.ker-
nel.org/arch/x86/resctrl.html> for more details on creating a COS before a
container can be assigned to it.

--read-only
Mount the container's root filesystem as read-only.

By default, container root filesystems are writable, allowing processes to
write files anywhere. By specifying the --read-only flag, the containers
root filesystem are mounted read-only prohibiting any writes.

--read-only-tmpfs
When running --read-only containers, mount a read-write tmpfs on /dev,
/dev/shm, /run, /tmp, and /var/tmp. The default is true.

+-------------+-------------------+-----+----------------------+
| --read-only | --read-only-tmpfs | / | /run, /tmp, /var/tmp |
+-------------+-------------------+-----+----------------------+
| true | true | r/o | r/w |
+-------------+-------------------+-----+----------------------+
| true | false | r/o | r/o |
+-------------+-------------------+-----+----------------------+
| false | false | r/w | r/w |
+-------------+-------------------+-----+----------------------+
| false | true | r/w | r/w |
+-------------+-------------------+-----+----------------------+

When --read-only=true and --read-only-tmpfs=true additional tmpfs are
mounted on the /tmp, /run, and /var/tmp directories.

When --read-only=true and --read-only-tmpfs=false /dev and /dev/shm are
marked Read/Only and no tmpfs are mounted on /tmp, /run and /var/tmp. The
directories are exposed from the underlying image, meaning they are read-
only by default. This makes the container totally read-only. No writable
directories exist within the container. In this mode writable directories
need to be added via external volumes or mounts.

By default, when --read-only=false, the /dev and /dev/shm are read/write,
and the /tmp, /run, and /var/tmp are read/write directories from the con-
tainer image.

--replace
If another container with the same name already exists, replace and remove
it. The default is false.

--requires=container
Specify one or more requirements. A requirement is a dependency container
that is started before this container. Containers can be specified by name
or ID, with multiple containers being separated by commas.

--restart=policy
Restart policy to follow when containers exit. Restart policy does not
take effect if a container is stopped via the podman kill or podman stop
commands.

Valid policy values are:

* no : Do not restart containers on exit

* never : Synonym for no; do not restart containers on
exit

* on-failure[:max_retries] : Restart containers when they exit with a non-
zero exit code, retrying indefinitely or until the optional max_retries
count is hit

* always : Restart containers when they exit, regardless
of status, retrying indefinitely

* unless-stopped : Restart containers when they exit, unless the
container was explicitly stopped by the user. After a system reboot, con-
tainers with this policy will be restarted by podman-restart.service only
if they were not explicitly stopped by the user before the reboot. This
differs from always, which restarts containers after a system reboot re-
gardless of whether they were user-stopped

Podman provides a systemd unit file, podman-restart.service, which restarts
containers after a system reboot.

When running containers in systemd services, use the restart functionality
provided by systemd. In other words, do not use this option in a container
unit, instead set the Restart= systemd directive in the [Service] section.
See podman-systemd.unit(5) and systemd.service(5).

--retry=attempts
Number of times to retry pulling or pushing images between the registry and
local storage in case of failure. Default is 3.

--retry-delay=duration
Duration of delay between retry attempts when pulling or pushing images be-
tween the registry and local storage in case of failure. The default is to
start at two seconds and then exponentially back off. The delay is used
when this value is set, and no exponential back off occurs.

--rm
Automatically remove the container and any anonymous unnamed volume associ-
ated with the container when it exits. The default is false.

--rootfs
If specified, the first argument refers to an exploded container on the
file system.

This is useful to run a container without requiring any image management,
the rootfs of the container is assumed to be managed externally.

Overlay Rootfs Mounts

The :O flag tells Podman to mount the directory from the rootfs path as
storage using the overlay file system. The container processes can modify
content within the mount point which is stored in the container storage in
a separate directory. In overlay terms, the source directory is the lower,
and the container storage directory is the upper. Modifications to the
mount point are destroyed when the container finishes executing, similar to
a tmpfs mount point being unmounted.

Note: On SELinux systems, the rootfs needs the correct label, which is by
default unconfined_u:object_r:container_file_t:s0.

idmap

If idmap is specified, create an idmapped mount to the target user name-
space in the container. The idmap option supports a custom mapping that
can be different than the user namespace used by the container. The map-
ping can be specified after the idmap option like:
idmap=uids=0-1-10#10-11-10;gids=0-100-10. For each triplet, the first
value is the start of the backing file system IDs that are mapped to the
second value on the host. The length of this mapping is given in the third
value. Multiple ranges are separated with #.

--sdnotify=container | conmon | healthy | ignore
Determines how to use the NOTIFY_SOCKET, as passed with systemd and
Type=notify.

Default is container, which means allow the OCI runtime to proxy the socket
into the container to receive ready notification. Podman sets the MAINPID
to conmon's pid. The conmon option sets MAINPID to conmon's pid, and sends
READY when the container has started. The socket is never passed to the
runtime or the container. The healthy option sets MAINPID to conmon's pid,
and sends READY when the container has turned healthy; requires a
healthcheck to be set. The socket is never passed to the runtime or the
container. The ignore option removes NOTIFY_SOCKET from the environment
for itself and child processes, for the case where some other process above
Podman uses NOTIFY_SOCKET and Podman does not use it.

--seccomp-policy=policy
Specify the policy to select the seccomp profile. If set to image, Podman
looks for a "io.containers.seccomp.profile" label in the container-image
config and use its value as a seccomp profile. Otherwise, Podman follows
the default policy by applying the default profile unless specified other-
wise via --security-opt seccomp as described below.

Note that this feature is experimental and may change in the future.

--secret=secret[,opt=opt ...]
Give the container access to a secret. Can be specified multiple times.

A secret is a blob of sensitive data which a container needs at runtime but
is not stored in the image or in source control, such as usernames and
passwords, TLS certificates and keys, SSH keys or other important generic
strings or binary content (up to 512 kB in size).

When secrets are specified as type mount, the secrets are copied and
mounted into the container when a container is created. When secrets are
specified as type env, the secret is set as an environment variable within
the container. Secrets are written in the container at the time of con-
tainer creation, and modifying the secret using podman secret commands af-
ter the container is created affects the secret inside the container.

Secrets and its storage are managed using the podman secret command.

Secret Options

* type=mount|env : How the secret is exposed to the container.
mount mounts the secret into the container as a file.
env exposes the secret as an environment variable.
Defaults to mount.

* target=target : Target of secret.
For mounted secrets, this is the path to the secret
inside the container.
If a fully qualified path is provided, the secret is
mounted at that location.
Otherwise, the secret is mounted to
/run/secrets/target for Linux containers or
/var/run/secrets/target for FreeBSD containers.
If the target is not set, the secret is mounted to
/run/secrets/secretname by default.
For env secrets, this is the environment variable
key. Defaults to secretname.

* uid=0 : UID of secret. Defaults to 0. Mount secret type only.

* gid=0 : GID of secret. Defaults to 0. Mount secret type only.

* mode=0 : Mode of secret. Defaults to 0444. Mount secret type
only.

Examples

Mount at /my/location/mysecret with UID 1:

--secret mysecret,target=/my/location/mysecret,uid=1

Mount at /run/secrets/customtarget with mode 0777:

--secret mysecret,target=customtarget,mode=0777

Create a secret environment variable called ENVSEC:

--secret mysecret,type=env,target=ENVSEC

--security-opt=option
Security Options

* apparmor=unconfined : Turn off apparmor confinement for the container

* apparmor=alternate-profile : Set the apparmor confinement profile for the
container

* label=user:USER: Set the label user for the container processes

* label=role:ROLE: Set the label role for the container processes

* label=type:TYPE: Set the label process type for the container processes

* label=level:LEVEL: Set the label level for the container processes

* label=filetype:TYPE: Set the label file type for the container files

* label=disable: Turn off label separation for the container

Note: Labeling can be disabled for all containers by setting label=false in
the containers.conf (/etc/containers/containers.conf or $HOME/.config/con-
tainers/containers.conf) file.

* label=nested: Allows SELinux modifications within the container. Contain-
ers are allowed to modify SELinux labels on files and processes, as long
as SELinux policy allows. Without nested, containers view SELinux as dis-
abled, even when it is enabled on the host. Containers are prevented from
setting any labels.

* mask=/path/1:/path/2: The paths to mask separated by a colon. A masked
path cannot be accessed inside the container.

* no-new-privileges: Disable container processes from gaining additional
privileges through the execve(2) system call (e.g. via setuid or setgid
bits, or via file capabilities). Programs that rely on setuid/setgid bits
set on their executable to change user id or group id are no longer able
to do so, and any file capabilities added to the executable (e.g. via
setcap) are not added to the permitted capability set. For more details,
see: https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/no_new_privs.html.

* seccomp=unconfined: Turn off seccomp confinement for the container.

* seccomp=profile.json: JSON file to be used as a seccomp filter. Note that
the io.podman.annotations.seccomp annotation is set with the specified
value as shown in podman inspect.

* proc-opts=OPTIONS : Comma-separated list of options to use for the /proc
mount. More details for the possible mount options are specified in the
proc(5) man page.

* unmask=ALL or /path/1:/path/2, or shell expanded paths (/proc/*): Paths
to unmask separated by a colon. If set to ALL, it unmasks all the paths
that are masked or made read-only by default. The default masked paths
are /proc/acpi, /proc/kcore, /proc/keys, /proc/latency_stats,
/proc/sched_debug, /proc/scsi, /proc/timer_list, /proc/timer_stats,
/sys/firmware, and /sys/fs/selinux, /sys/devices/virtual/powercap. The
default paths that are read-only are /proc/asound, /proc/bus, /proc/fs,
/proc/irq, /proc/sys, /proc/sysrq-trigger, /sys/fs/cgroup.

Note: Labeling can be disabled for all containers by setting label=false in
the containers.conf(5) file.

--shm-size=number[unit]
Size of /dev/shm. A unit can be b (bytes), k (kibibytes), m (mebibytes), or
g (gibibytes). If the unit is omitted, the system uses bytes. If the size
is omitted, the default is 64m. When size is 0, there is no limit on the
amount of memory used for IPC by the container. This option conflicts with
--ipc=host.

--shm-size-systemd=number[unit]
Size of systemd-specific tmpfs mounts such as /run, /run/lock,
/var/log/journal and /tmp. A unit can be b (bytes), k (kibibytes), m
(mebibytes), or g (gibibytes). If the unit is omitted, the system uses
bytes. If the size is omitted, the default is 64m. When size is 0, the us-
age is limited to 50% of the host's available memory.

--stop-signal=signal
Signal to stop a container. Default is SIGTERM.

--stop-timeout=seconds
Timeout to stop a container. Default is 10. Remote connections use local
containers.conf for defaults.

--subgidname=name
Run the container in a new user namespace using the map with name in the
/etc/subgid file. If running rootless, the user needs to have the right to
use the mapping. See subgid(5). This flag conflicts with --userns and
--gidmap.

--subuidname=name
Run the container in a new user namespace using the map with name in the
/etc/subuid file. If running rootless, the user needs to have the right to
use the mapping. See subuid(5). This flag conflicts with --userns and
--uidmap.

--sysctl=name=value
Configure namespaced kernel parameters at runtime.

For the IPC namespace, the following sysctls are allowed:

* kernel.msgmax

* kernel.msgmnb

* kernel.msgmni

* kernel.sem

* kernel.shmall

* kernel.shmmax

* kernel.shmmni

* kernel.shm_rmid_forced

* Sysctls beginning with fs.mqueue.*

Note: if using the --ipc=host option, the above sysctls are not allowed.

For the network namespace, only sysctls beginning with net.* are allowed.

Note: if using the --network=host option, the above sysctls are not al-
lowed.

--systemd=true | false | always
Run container in systemd mode. The default is true.

* true enables systemd mode only when the command executed inside the con-
tainer is systemd, /usr/sbin/init, /sbin/init or /usr/local/sbin/init.

* false disables systemd mode.

* always enforces the systemd mode to be enabled.

Running the container in systemd mode causes the following changes:

* Podman mounts tmpfs file systems on the following directories

* /run

* /run/lock

* /tmp

* /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd (on a cgroup v1 system)

* /var/lib/journal

* Podman sets the default stop signal to SIGRTMIN+3.

* Podman sets container_uuid environment variable in the container to the
first 32 characters of the container ID.

* Podman does not mount virtual consoles (/dev/tty\d+) when running with
--privileged.

* On cgroup v2, /sys/fs/cgroup is mounted writable.

This allows systemd to run in a confined container without any modifica-
tions.

Note that on SELinux systems, systemd attempts to write to the cgroup file
system. Containers writing to the cgroup file system are denied by default.
The container_manage_cgroup boolean must be enabled for this to be allowed
on an SELinux separated system.

setsebool -P container_manage_cgroup true

--timeout=seconds
Maximum time a container is allowed to run before conmon sends it the kill
signal. By default containers run until they exit or are stopped by podman
stop.

--tls-verify
Require HTTPS and verify certificates when contacting registries (default:
true). If explicitly set to true, TLS verification is used. If set to
false, TLS verification is not used. If not specified, TLS verification is
used unless the target registry is listed as an insecure registry in con-
tainers-registries.conf(5)

--tmpfs=fs
Create a tmpfs mount.

Mount a temporary filesystem (tmpfs) mount into a container, for example:

$ podman create -d --tmpfs /tmp:rw,size=787448k,mode=1777 my_image

This command mounts a tmpfs at /tmp within the container. The supported
mount options are the same as the Linux default mount flags. If no options
are specified, the system uses the following options: rw,noexec,no-
suid,nodev.

--tty, -t
Allocate a pseudo-TTY. The default is false.

When set to true, Podman allocates a pseudo-tty and attach to the standard
input of the container. This can be used, for example, to run a throwaway
interactive shell.

NOTE: The --tty flag prevents redirection of standard output. It combines
STDOUT and STDERR, it can insert control characters, and it can hang pipes.
This option is only used when run interactively in a terminal. When feeding
input to Podman, use -i only, not -it.

--tz=timezone
Set timezone in container. This flag takes area-based timezones, GMT time,
as well as local, which sets the timezone in the container to match the
host machine. See /usr/share/zoneinfo/ for valid timezones. Remote connec-
tions use local containers.conf for defaults

--uidmap=[flags]container_uid:from_uid[:amount]
Run the container in a new user namespace using the supplied UID mapping.
This option conflicts with the --userns and --subuidname options. This op-
tion provides a way to map host UIDs to container UIDs. It can be passed
several times to map different ranges.

The possible values of the optional flags are discussed further down on
this page. The amount value is optional and assumed to be 1 if not given.

The from_uid value is based upon the user running the command, either root-
ful or rootless users.

* rootful user: [flags]container_uid:host_uid[:amount]

* rootless user: [flags]container_uid:intermediate_uid[:amount]

Rootful mappings

When podman create is called by a privileged user, the option --uidmap
works as a direct mapping between host UIDs and container UIDs.

host UID -> container UID

The amount specifies the number of consecutive UIDs that is mapped. If for
example amount is 4 the mapping looks like:

Rootless mappings

When podman create is called by an unprivileged user (i.e. running root-
less), the value from_uid is interpreted as an "intermediate UID". In the
rootless case, host UIDs are not mapped directly to container UIDs. Instead
the mapping happens over two mapping steps:

host UID -> intermediate UID -> container UID

The --uidmap option only influences the second mapping step.

The first mapping step is derived by Podman from the contents of the file
/etc/subuid and the UID of the user calling Podman.

First mapping step:

+---------------------+------------------+
| host UID | intermediate UID |
+---------------------+------------------+
| UID for Podman user | 0 |
+---------------------+------------------+
| 1st subordinate UID | 1 |
+---------------------+------------------+
| 2nd subordinate UID | 2 |
+---------------------+------------------+
| 3rd subordinate UID | 3 |
+---------------------+------------------+
| nth subordinate UID | n |
+---------------------+------------------+

To be able to use intermediate UIDs greater than zero, the user needs to
have subordinate UIDs configured in /etc/subuid. See subuid(5).

The second mapping step is configured with --uidmap.

If for example amount is 5 the second mapping step looks like:

When running as rootless, Podman uses all the ranges configured in the
/etc/subuid file.

The current user ID is mapped to UID=0 in the rootless user namespace.
Every additional range is added sequentially afterward:

+-----------------------+-------------------------+----------------------+
| host | rootless user namespace | length |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+----------------------+
| $UID | 0 | 1 |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+----------------------+
| 1 | $FIRST_RANGE_ID | $FIRST_RANGE_LENGTH |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+----------------------+
| 1+$FIRST_RANGE_LENGTH | $SECOND_RANGE_ID | $SECOND_RANGE_LENGTH |
+-----------------------+-------------------------+----------------------+

Referencing a host ID from the parent namespace

As a rootless user, the given host ID in --uidmap or --gidmap is mapped
from the intermediate namespace generated by Podman. Sometimes it is desir-
able to refer directly at the host namespace. It is possible to manually do
so, by running podman unshare cat /proc/self/gid_map, finding the desired
host id at the second column of the output, and getting the corresponding
intermediate id from the first column.

Podman can perform all that by preceding the host id in the mapping with
the @ symbol. For instance, by specifying --gidmap 100000:@2000:1, podman
will look up the intermediate id corresponding to host id 2000 and it will
map the found intermediate id to the container id 100000. The given host id
must have been subordinated (otherwise it would not be mapped into the in-
termediate space in the first place).

If the length is greater than one, for instance with --gidmap
100000:@2000:2, Podman will map host ids 2000 and 2001 to 100000 and
100001, respectively, regardless of how the intermediate mapping is de-
fined.

Extending previous mappings

Some mapping modifications may be cumbersome. For instance, a user starts
with a mapping such as --gidmap="0:0:65000", that needs to be changed such
as the parent id 1 is mapped to container id 100000 instead, leaving con-
tainer id 1 unassigned. The corresponding --gidmap becomes --gidmap="0:0:1"
--gidmap="2:2:65534" --gidmap="100000:1:1".

This notation can be simplified using the + flag, that takes care of break-
ing previous mappings removing any conflicting assignment with the given
mapping. The flag is given before the container id as follows:
--gidmap="0:0:65000" --gidmap="+100000:1:1"

+------+-------------+-----------------------------+
| Flag | Example | Description |
+------+-------------+-----------------------------+
| + | +100000:1:1 | Extend the previous mapping |
+------+-------------+-----------------------------+

This notation leads to gaps in the assignment, so it may be convenient to
fill those gaps afterwards: --gidmap="0:0:65000" --gidmap="+100000:1:1"
--gidmap="1:65001:1"

One specific use case for this flag is in the context of rootless users. A
rootless user may specify mappings with the + flag as in
--gidmap="+100000:1:1". Podman will then "fill the gaps" starting from zero
with all the remaining intermediate ids. This is convenient when a user
wants to map a specific intermediate id to a container id, leaving the rest
of subordinate ids to be mapped by Podman at will.

Passing only one of --uidmap or --gidmap

Usually, subordinated user and group ids are assigned simultaneously, and
for any user the subordinated user ids match the subordinated group ids.
For convenience, if only one of --uidmap or --gidmap is given, podman as-
sumes the mapping refers to both UIDs and GIDs and applies the given map-
ping to both. If only one value of the two needs to be changed, the map-
pings should include the u or the g flags to specify that they only apply
to UIDs or GIDs and should not be copied over.

+------+---------------+----------------------+
| flag | Example | Description |
+------+---------------+----------------------+
| u | u20000:2000:1 | The mapping only ap- |
| | | plies to UIDs |
+------+---------------+----------------------+
| g | g10000:1000:1 | The mapping only ap- |
| | | plies to GIDs |
+------+---------------+----------------------+

For instance given the command

podman create --gidmap "0:0:1000" --gidmap "g2000:2000:1"

Since no --uidmap is given, the --gidmap is copied to --uidmap, giving a
command equivalent to

podman create --gidmap "0:0:1000" --gidmap "2000:2000:1" --uidmap "0:0:1000"

The --gidmap "g2000:2000:1" used the g flag and therefore it was not copied
to --uidmap.

Rootless mapping of additional host GIDs

A rootless user may desire to map a specific host group that has already
been subordinated within /etc/subgid without specifying the rest of the
mapping.

This can be done with --gidmap "+gcontainer_gid:@host_gid"

Where:

* The host GID is given through the @ symbol

* The mapping of this GID is not copied over to --usermap thanks to the g
flag.

* The rest of the container IDs will be mapped starting from 0 to n, with
all the remaining subordinated GIDs, thanks to the + flag.

For instance, if a user belongs to the group 2000 and that group is subor-
dinated to that user (with usermod --add-subgids 2000-2000 $USER), the user
can map the group into the container with: --gidmap=+g100000:@2000.

If this mapping is combined with the option, --group-add=keep-groups, the
process in the container will belong to group 100000, and files belonging
to group 2000 in the host will appear as being owned by group 100000 inside
the container.

podman run --group-add=keep-groups --gidmap="+g100000:@2000" ...

No subordinate UIDs

Even if a user does not have any subordinate UIDs in /etc/subuid, --uidmap
can be used to map the normal UID of the user to a container UID by running
podman create --uidmap $container_uid:0:1 --user $container_uid ....

Pods

The --uidmap option cannot be called in conjunction with the --pod option
as a uidmap cannot be set on the container level when in a pod.

--ulimit=option
Ulimit options. Sets the ulimits values inside of the container.

--ulimit with a soft and hard limit in the format =[:]. For example:

$ podman run --ulimit nofile=1024:1024 --rm ubi9 ulimit -n 1024

Set -1 for the soft or hard limit to set the limit to the maximum limit of
the current process. In rootful mode this is often unlimited.

If nofile and nproc are unset, a default value of 1048576 will be used, un-
less overridden in containers.conf(5). However, if the default value ex-
ceeds the hard limit for the current rootless user, the current hard limit
will be applied instead.

Use host to copy the current configuration from the host.

Don't use nproc with the ulimit flag as Linux uses nproc to set the maximum
number of processes available to a user, not to a container.

Use the --pids-limit option to modify the cgroup control to limit the num-
ber of processes within a container.

--umask=umask
Set the umask inside the container. Defaults to 0022. Remote connections
use the local containers.conf for defaults.

--unsetenv=env
Unset default environment variables for the container. Default environment
variables include variables provided natively by Podman, environment vari-
ables configured by the image, and environment variables from contain-
ers.conf.

--unsetenv-all
Unset all default environment variables for the container. Default environ-
ment variables include variables provided natively by Podman, environment
variables configured by the image, and environment variables from contain-
ers.conf.

--user, -u=user[:group]
Sets the username or UID used and, optionally, the groupname or GID for the
specified command. Both user and group may be symbolic or numeric.

Without this argument, the command runs as the user specified in the con-
tainer image. Unless overridden by a USER command in the Containerfile or
by a value passed to this option, this user generally defaults to root.

When a user namespace is not in use, the UID and GID used within the con-
tainer and on the host match. When user namespaces are in use, however, the
UID and GID in the container may correspond to another UID and GID on the
host. In rootless containers, for example, a user namespace is always used,
and root in the container by default corresponds to the UID and GID of the
user invoking Podman.

--userns=mode
Set the user namespace mode for the container.

If --userns is not set, the default value is determined as follows. - If
--pod is set, --userns is ignored and the user namespace of the pod is
used. - If the environment variable PODMAN_USERNS is set its value is
used. - If userns is specified in containers.conf this value is used. -
Otherwise, --userns=host is assumed.

--userns="" (i.e., an empty string) is an alias for --userns=host.

This option is incompatible with --gidmap, --uidmap, --subuidname and
--subgidname.

Rootless user --userns=Key mappings:

Valid mode values are:

auto[:OPTIONS,...]: automatically create a unique user namespace.

* rootful mode: The --userns=auto flag requires that the user name contain-
ers be specified in the /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid files, with an unused
range of subordinate user IDs that Podman containers are allowed to allo-
cate. Example: containers:2147483647:2147483648.

* rootless mode: The users range from the /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid files
will be used. Note running a single container without using --userns=auto
will use the entire range of UIDs and not allow further subdividing. See
subuid(5).

Podman allocates unique ranges of UIDs and GIDs from the containers subor-
dinate user IDs. The size of the ranges is based on the number of UIDs re-
quired in the image. The number of UIDs and GIDs can be overridden with the
size option.

The option --userns=keep-id uses all the subuids and subgids of the user.
The option --userns=nomap uses all the subuids and subgids of the user ex-
cept the user's own ID. Using --userns=auto when starting new containers
does not work as long as any containers exist that were started with
--userns=nomap or --userns=keep-id without limiting the user namespace
size.

Valid auto options:

* gidmapping=CONTAINER_GID:HOST_GID:SIZE: to force a GID mapping to be
present in the user namespace.

* size=SIZE: to specify an explicit size for the automatic user namespace.
e.g. --userns=auto:size=8192. If size is not specified, auto estimates a
size for the user namespace.

* uidmapping=CONTAINER_UID:HOST_UID:SIZE: to force a UID mapping to be
present in the user namespace.

The host UID and GID in gidmapping and uidmapping can optionally be pre-
fixed with the @ symbol. In this case, podman will look up the intermedi-
ate ID corresponding to host ID and it will map the found intermediate ID
to the container id. For details see --uidmap.

container:id: join the user namespace of the specified container.

host or "" (empty string): run in the user namespace of the caller. The
processes running in the container have the same privileges on the host as
any other process launched by the calling user.

keep-id: creates a user namespace where the current user's UID:GID are
mapped to the same values in the container. For containers created by root,
the current mapping is created into a new user namespace.

In addition, the init process within the container will run under the cur-
rent user's UID. This behavior overrides the image's USER instruction un-
less you explicitly set --user.

Valid keep-id options:

* uid=UID: override the UID inside the container that is used to map the
current user to.

* gid=GID: override the GID inside the container that is used to map the
current user to.

* size=SIZE: override the size of the configured user namespace. It is
useful to not saturate all the available IDs. Not supported when running
as root.

nomap: creates a user namespace where the current rootless user's UID:GID
are not mapped into the container. This option is not allowed for contain-
ers created by the root user.

ns:namespace: run the container in the given existing user namespace.

--uts=mode
Set the UTS namespace mode for the container. The following values are sup-
ported:

* host: use the host's UTS namespace inside the container.

* private: create a new namespace for the container (default).

* ns:[path]: run the container in the given existing UTS namespace.

* container:[container]: join the UTS namespace of the specified container.

--variant=VARIANT
Use VARIANT instead of the default architecture variant of the container
image. Some images can use multiple variants of the arm architectures, such
as arm/v5 and arm/v7.

--volume, -v=[[SOURCE-VOLUME|HOST-DIR:]CONTAINER-DIR[:OPTIONS]]
Create a bind mount. If -v /HOST-DIR:/CONTAINER-DIR is specified, Podman
bind mounts /HOST-DIR from the host into /CONTAINER-DIR in the Podman con-
tainer. Similarly, -v SOURCE-VOLUME:/CONTAINER-DIR mounts the named volume
from the host into the container. If no such named volume exists, Podman
creates one. If no source is given, the volume is created as an anonymously
named volume with a randomly generated name, and is removed when the con-
tainer is removed via the --rm flag or the podman rm --volumes command.

(Note when using the remote client, including Mac and Windows (excluding
WSL2) machines, the volumes are mounted from the remote server, not neces-
sarily the client machine.)

The OPTIONS is a comma-separated list and can be one or more of:

* rw|ro

* z|Z

* [O]

* [U]

* [no]copy

* [no]dev

* [no]exec

* [no]suid

* [r]bind

* [r]shared|[r]slave|[r]private[r]unbindable [1] <#Footnote1>

* idmap[=options]

The CONTAINER-DIR must be an absolute path such as /src/docs. The volume is
mounted into the container at this directory.

If a volume source is specified, it must be a path on the host or the name
of a named volume. Host paths are allowed to be absolute or relative; rela-
tive paths are resolved relative to the directory Podman is run in. If the
source does not exist, Podman returns an error. Users must pre-create the
source files or directories.

Any source that does not begin with a . or / is treated as the name of a
named volume. If a volume with that name does not exist, it is created.
Volumes created with names are not anonymous, and they are not removed by
the --rm option and the podman rm --volumes command.

Specify multiple -v options to mount one or more volumes into a container.

Write Protected Volume Mounts

Add :ro or :rw option to mount a volume in read-only or read-write mode,
respectively. By default, the volumes are mounted read-write. See exam-
ples.

Chowning Volume Mounts

When a named volume is first mounted to a container, Podman automatically
adjusts the ownership of the volume's mount point during container initial-
ization. This chown operation occurs under the following conditions:

* The volume was not used yet (has NeedsChown set to true)

* The volume is empty or has not been copied up yet

* The volume is not managed by an external volume driver

* The volume driver is not "image"

For volumes with idmapped mounts (using the idmap option), the ownership
change takes into account the container's user namespace mappings, but the
idmapped volume retains proper UID/GID mapping. For volumes without idmap-
ping, the mount point is chowned to match the container's process user and
group, mapped to the host user namespace if user namespace remapping is en-
abled.

If a container is created in a new user namespace, the UID and GID in the
container may correspond to another UID and GID on the host.

The :U suffix tells Podman to use the correct host UID and GID based on the
UID and GID within the container, to change recursively the owner and group
of the source volume. Chowning walks the file system under the volume and
changes the UID/GID on each file. If the volume has thousands of inodes,
this process takes a long time, delaying the start of the container.

Warning use with caution since this modifies the host filesystem.

Labeling Volume Mounts

Labeling systems like SELinux require that proper labels are placed on vol-
ume content mounted into a container. Without a label, the security system
might prevent the processes running inside the container from using the
content. By default, Podman does not change the labels set by the OS.

To change a label in the container context, add either of two suffixes :z
or :Z to the volume mount. These suffixes tell Podman to relabel file ob-
jects on the shared volumes. The z option tells Podman that two or more
containers share the volume content. As a result, Podman labels the content
with a shared content label. Shared volume labels allow all containers to
read/write content. The Z option tells Podman to label the content with a
private unshared label. Only the current container can use a private vol-
ume.

Note: all containers within a pod share the same SELinux label. This means
all containers within said pod can read/write volumes shared into the con-
tainer created with the :Z on any one of the containers. Relabeling walks
the file system under the volume and changes the label on each file; if the
volume has thousands of inodes, this process takes a long time, delaying
the start of the container. If the volume was previously relabeled with the
z option, Podman is optimized to not relabel a second time. If files are
moved into the volume, then the labels can be manually changed with the
chcon -Rt container_file_t PATH command.

Note: Do not relabel system files and directories. Relabeling system con-
tent might cause other confined services on the machine to fail. For these
types of containers we recommend disabling SELinux separation. The option
--security-opt label=disable disables SELinux separation for the container.
For example if a user wanted to volume mount their entire home directory
into a container, they need to disable SELinux separation.

$ podman create --security-opt label=disable -v $HOME:/home/user fedora touch /home/user/file

Overlay Volume Mounts

The :O flag tells Podman to mount the directory from the host as a tempo-
rary storage using the overlay file system. The container processes can
modify content within the mountpoint which is stored in the container stor-
age in a separate directory. In overlay terms, the source directory is the
lower, and the container storage directory is the upper. Modifications to
the mount point are destroyed when the container finishes executing, simi-
lar to a tmpfs mount point being unmounted.

For advanced users, the overlay option also supports custom non-volatile
upperdir and workdir for the overlay mount. Custom upperdir and workdir can
be fully managed by the users themselves, and Podman does not remove it on
lifecycle completion. Example :O,upperdir=/some/upper,workdir=/some/work

Subsequent executions of the container sees the original source directory
content, any changes from previous container executions no longer exist.

One use case of the overlay mount is sharing the package cache from the
host into the container to allow speeding up builds.

Note: The O flag conflicts with other options listed above.

Content mounted into the container is labeled with the private label. On
SELinux systems, labels in the source directory must be readable by the
container label. Usually containers can read/execute container_share_t and
can read/write container_file_t. If unable to change the labels on a source
volume, SELinux container separation must be disabled for the container to
work.

Do not modify the source directory mounted into the container with an over-
lay mount, it can cause unexpected failures. Only modify the directory af-
ter the container finishes running.

Mounts propagation

By default, bind-mounted volumes are private. That means any mounts done
inside the container are not visible on the host and vice versa. One can
change this behavior by specifying a volume mount propagation property.
When a volume is shared, mounts done under that volume inside the container
are visible on host and vice versa. Making a volume slave[1] <#Footnote1>
enables only one-way mount propagation: mounts done on the host under that
volume are visible inside the container but not the other way around.

To control mount propagation property of a volume one can use the
[r]shared, [r]slave, [r]private or the [r]unbindable propagation flag.
Propagation property can be specified only for bind mounted volumes and not
for internal volumes or named volumes. For mount propagation to work the
source mount point (the mount point where source dir is mounted on) has to
have the right propagation properties. For shared volumes, the source mount
point has to be shared. And for slave volumes, the source mount point has
to be either shared or slave. [1] <#Footnote1>

To recursively mount a volume and all of its submounts into a container,
use the rbind option. By default the bind option is used, and submounts of
the source directory is not mounted into the container.

Mounting the volume with a copy option tells podman to copy content from
the underlying destination directory onto newly created internal volumes.
The copy only happens on the initial creation of the volume. Content is not
copied up when the volume is subsequently used on different containers. The
copy option is ignored on bind mounts and has no effect.

Mounting volumes with the nosuid options means that SUID executables on the
volume can not be used by applications to change their privilege. By de-
fault volumes are mounted with nosuid.

Mounting the volume with the noexec option means that no executables on the
volume can be executed within the container.

Mounting the volume with the nodev option means that no devices on the vol-
ume can be used by processes within the container. By default volumes are
mounted with nodev.

If the HOST-DIR is a mount point, then dev, suid, and exec options are ig-
nored by the kernel.

Use df HOST-DIR to figure out the source mount, then use findmnt -o TAR-
GET,PROPAGATION source-mount-dir to figure out propagation properties of
source mount. If findmnt(1) utility is not available, then one can look at
the mount entry for the source mount point in /proc/self/mountinfo. Look at
the "optional fields" and see if any propagation properties are specified.
In there, shared:N means the mount is shared, master:N means mount is
slave, and if nothing is there, the mount is private. [1] <#Footnote1>

To change propagation properties of a mount point, use mount(8) command.
For example, if one wants to bind mount source directory /foo, one can do
mount --bind /foo /foo and mount --make-private --make-shared /foo. This
converts /foo into a shared mount point. Alternatively, one can directly
change propagation properties of source mount. Say / is source mount for
/foo, then use mount --make-shared / to convert / into a shared mount.

Note: if the user only has access rights via a group, accessing the volume
from inside a rootless container fails.

Idmapped mount

If idmap is specified, create an idmapped mount to the target user name-
space in the container. The idmap option supports a custom mapping that can
be different than the user namespace used by the container. The mapping can
be specified after the idmap option like:
idmap=uids=0-1-10#10-11-10;gids=0-100-10. For each triplet, the first
value is the start of the backing file system IDs that are mapped to the
second value on the host. The length of this mapping is given in the third
value. Multiple ranges are separated with #.

Use the --group-add keep-groups option to pass the user's supplementary
group access into the container.

--volumes-from=CONTAINER[:OPTIONS]
Mount volumes from the specified container(s). Used to share volumes be-
tween containers. The options is a comma-separated list with the following
available elements:

* rw|ro

* z

Mounts already mounted volumes from a source container onto another con-
tainer. CONTAINER may be a name or ID. To share a volume, use the --vol-
umes-from option when running the target container. Volumes can be shared
even if the source container is not running.

By default, Podman mounts the volumes in the same mode (read-write or read-
only) as it is mounted in the source container. This can be changed by
adding a ro or rw option.

To change a label in the container context, add z to the volume mount.
This suffix tells Podman to relabel file objects on the shared volumes. The
z option tells Podman that two entities share the volume content. As a re-
sult, Podman labels the content with a shared content label. Shared volume
labels allow all containers to read/write content.

If the location of the volume from the source container overlaps with data
residing on a target container, then the volume hides that data on the tar-
get.

--workdir, -w=dir
Working directory inside the container.

The default working directory for running binaries within a container is
the root directory (/). The image developer can set a different default
with the WORKDIR instruction. The operator can override the working direc-
tory by using the -w option.

EXAMPLES
Create a container using a local image:

$ podman create alpine ls

Create a container using a local image and annotate it:

$ podman create --annotation HELLO=WORLD alpine ls

Create a container using a local image, allocating a pseudo-TTY, keeping
stdin open and name it myctr:

podman create -t -i --name myctr alpine ls

Running a container in a new user namespace requires a mapping of the UIDs
and GIDs from the host:

$ podman create --uidmap 0:30000:7000 --gidmap 0:30000:7000 fedora echo hello

Setting automatic user-namespace separated containers:

# podman create --userns=auto:size=65536 ubi8-init

Configure the timezone in a container:

$ podman create --tz=local alpine date
$ podman create --tz=Asia/Shanghai alpine date
$ podman create --tz=US/Eastern alpine date

Ensure the first container (container1) is running before the second con-
tainer (container2) is started:

$ podman create --name container1 -t -i fedora bash
$ podman create --name container2 --requires container1 -t -i fedora bash
$ podman start --attach container2

Create a container which requires multiple containers:

$ podman create --name container1 -t -i fedora bash
$ podman create --name container2 -t -i fedora bash
$ podman create --name container3 --requires container1,container2 -t -i fedora bash
$ podman start --attach container3

Expose shared libraries inside of container as read-only using a glob:

$ podman create --mount type=glob,src=/usr/lib64/libnvidia\*,ro -i -t fedora /bin/bash

Create a container allowing supplemental groups to have access to the vol-
ume:

$ podman create -v /var/lib/design:/var/lib/design --group-add keep-groups ubi8

Configure execution domain for containers using the personality option:

$ podman create --name container1 --personality=LINUX32 fedora bash

Create a container with external rootfs mounted as an overlay:

$ podman create --name container1 --rootfs /path/to/rootfs:O bash

Create a container connected to two networks (called net1 and net2) with a
static ip:

$ podman create --network net1:ip=10.89.1.5 --network net2:ip=10.89.10.10 alpine ip addr

Rootless Containers
Podman runs as a non-root user on most systems. This feature requires that
a new enough version of shadow-utils be installed. The shadow-utils package
must include the newuidmap and newgidmap executables.

In order for users to run rootless, there must be an entry for their user-
name in /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid which lists the UIDs for their user
namespace.

Rootless Podman works better if the fuse-overlayfs and slirp4netns packages
are installed. The fuse-overlayfs package provides a userspace overlay
storage driver, otherwise users need to use the vfs storage driver, which
can be disk space expensive and less performant than other drivers.

To enable VPN on the container, slirp4netns or pasta needs to be specified;
without either, containers need to be run with the --network=host flag.

ENVIRONMENT
Environment variables within containers can be set using multiple different
options: This section describes the precedence.

Precedence order (later entries override earlier entries):

* --env-host : Host environment of the process executing Podman is added.

* --http-proxy: By default, several environment variables are passed in
from the host, such as http_proxy and no_proxy. See --http-proxy for de-
tails.

* Container image : Any environment variables specified in the container
image.

* --env-file : Any environment variables specified via env-files. If multi-
ple files specified, then they override each other in order of entry.

* --env : Any environment variables specified overrides previous settings.

Create containers and set the environment ending with a *. The trailing *
glob functionality is only active when no value is specified:

$ export ENV1=a
$ podman create --name ctr1 --env 'ENV*' alpine env
$ podman start --attach ctr1 | grep ENV
ENV1=a
$ podman create --name ctr2 --env 'ENV*=b' alpine env
$ podman start --attach ctr2 | grep ENV
ENV*=b

CONMON
When Podman starts a container it actually executes the conmon program,
which then executes the OCI Runtime. Conmon is the container monitor. It
is a small program whose job is to watch the primary process of the con-
tainer, and if the container dies, save the exit code. It also holds open
the tty of the container, so that it can be attached to later. This is what
allows Podman to run in detached mode (backgrounded), so Podman can exit
but conmon continues to run. Each container has their own instance of con-
mon. Conmon waits for the container to exit, gathers and saves the exit
code, and then launches a Podman process to complete the container cleanup,
by shutting down the network and storage. For more information about con-
mon, see the conmon(8) man page.

FILES
/etc/subuid /etc/subgid

NOTE: Use the environment variable TMPDIR to change the temporary storage
location of downloaded container images. Podman defaults to use /var/tmp.

SEE ALSO
podman(1), podman-save(1), podman-ps(1), podman-attach(1), podman-pod-cre-
ate(1), podman-port(1), podman-start(1), podman-kill(1), podman-stop(1),
podman-generate-systemd(1), podman-rm(1), subgid(5), subuid(5), contain-
ers.conf(5), podman-systemd.unit(5), setsebool(8), slirp4netns(1),
pasta(1), fuse-overlayfs(1), proc(5), conmon(8), personality(2)

Troubleshooting
See podman-troubleshooting(7) for solutions to common issues.

See podman-rootless(7) for rootless issues.

HISTORY
October 2017, converted from Docker documentation to Podman by Dan Walsh
for Podman <dwalsh@redhat.com>

November 2014, updated by Sven Dowideit <SvenDowideit@home.org.au>

September 2014, updated by Sven Dowideit <SvenDowideit@home.org.au>

August 2014, updated by Sven Dowideit <SvenDowideit@home.org.au>

FOOTNOTES
1: The Podman project is committed to inclusivity, a core value of open
source. The master and slave mount propagation terminology used here is
problematic and divisive, and needs to be changed. However, these terms are
currently used within the Linux kernel and must be used as-is at this time.
When the kernel maintainers rectify this usage, Podman will follow suit im-
mediately.

podman-create(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=podman-container-create&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

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