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name: podman description: Manage containers, pods, and images as a daemonless, rootless alternative to Docker. Use when running containerized applications, building images, grouping containers into pods, or performing cleanup.

Podman Skill

Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. It is daemonless and can run containers as a non-root user.

Container Management

Basic Lifecycle

Copy# Run a container (detached)
podman run -d --name my-app alpine sleep 1000

# List running containers
podman ps

# List all containers (including stopped ones)
podman ps -a

# Stop and remove a container
podman stop my-app
podman rm my-app

# Inspect container details
podman inspect my-app

Logs and Execution

Copy# View container logs (non-interactive)
podman logs my-app

# Execute a command in a running container
podman exec my-app ls /app

Image Management

Copy# Pull an image
podman pull alpine:latest

# List local images
podman images

# Build an image from a Containerfile (or Dockerfile)
podman build -t my-custom-image .

# Remove an image
podman rmi my-custom-image

Pods (Unique to Podman)

Pods allow grouping multiple containers together so they share the same network namespace (localhost).

Copy# Create a pod
podman pod create --name my-stack -p 8080:80

# Run a container inside a pod
podman run -d --pod my-stack --name nginx nginx

# List pods
podman pod ps

Maintenance and Cleanup

Copy# Remove all stopped containers, unused networks, and dangling images
podman system prune -f

# Show disk usage by containers/images
podman system df

Headless / Non-Interactive Tips

• Force Flag: Use -f or --force with rm, rmi, and prune to avoid confirmation prompts.
• Detached Mode: Always use -d for long-running services to prevent the command from hanging. For interactive sessions, use: tmux new -d 'podman run -it --name my-app alpine sh'
• Rootless: Podman runs in rootless mode by default for the current user. Ensure subuid/subgid are configured if running complex workloads.
• Docker Compatibility: Most docker commands can be prefixed with podman instead.

Volumes

Copy# Create a volume
podman volume create my-data

# Run container with a volume mount
podman run -v my-data:/data:Z alpine ls /data

Note: Use :Z or :z suffix for volume mounts on systems with SELinux to automatically relabel files.

Related Skills

• nix: Use Nix to create development environments that can be integrated with Podman containers.