PODMAN: How To Configure Podman Container Instance As System Unit Service To Autorestart When the Host OS Reboots

Please find the steps below for enabling the podman container instance to auto restart when the OS is rebooted.

1) list the podman instances to get the container ID and name. 

podman ps -a

For e.g. below output

# podman ps -a

CONTAINER ID  IMAGE           COMMAND   CREATED        STATUS     PORTS       NAMES

45782651b66d  localhost/ock-ostree:latest nginx -g daemon o...  2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes           0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp    ock-content-server

2) Configure the podman container instance as service and enable the service. 

For this use below steps.

2(a) Create systemd file for podman container instances. In below command replace the name with container ID and os-tree-podman.service with the service name of choice.

podman generate systemd --new --name 9596fff2a7b1>/etc/systemd/system/ostree-podman.service

Above command will create a file /etc/systemd/system/ostree-podman.service

2(b) Restart the system daemon

systemctl daemon-reload

2(c) Enable the newly created podman container system unit file.

systemctl enable ostree-podman.service

2(d) List the system unit files 

systemctl list-unit-files | grep -i podman

You should see the newly created podman container system unit file and it should be enabled. For e.g. below output

# systemctl list-unit-files | grep -i podman

ostree-podman.service  enabled  

3) Reboot the host and  validate that the podman container instances is auto restarted.

For veirfying this, run below command.

podman ps -a

Keywords

Configuring setting up setup autorestart auto-restart service unit files files containers instances operating system rebooting reboots reboot restart restarting restarts os