General Information

Podman is an OCI (open container initiative) compliant container client and fully docker compatible.

Podman allows you to run and perform all of the docker-cli commands without running a docker daemon.

Installing podman, the drop in replacement for docker cli.

Install the pre-req and add the PPA

sudo apt -y install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:projectatomic/ppa

Install podman

sudo apt install podman

Add dockerhub as a default location to search for short named containers.

sudo vim /etc/containers/registries.conf
 
[registries.search]
registries = ["docker.io"]

Since podman does not use a daemon, you can simply inspect/build/run containers and images.

Containers can also be run with non-root privileges.

The containers use storage at:

• Running as normal user: ~/.local/containers/
• Running as root/with sudo: /var/lib/containers/

Podman commands are the same as docker cli. See some examples below.

Display podman settings/info

podman info

Show images

podman images

Show all containers

podman ps -a

Run a container interactively and attach a bash shell

podman run -it registryname/image /bin/bash