This project aims to address containers/podman#21243 in alignment with the https://github.com/containers/bootc project.
- Be a scriptable CLI that offers an efficient and ergonomic "edit-compile-debug" cycle for bootable containers.
- Be a backend for https://github.com/containers/podman-desktop-extension-bootc
- Work on both MacOS and Linux
First be sure you have the Podman Desktop bootc extension requirements.
On MacOS you can use homebrew to install podman-bootc:
brew tap germag/podman-bootc
brew install podman-bootc
alternatively, you can download the latest development cutting-edge source
brew install --head podman-bootc
It will install xorriso and libvirt, but it doesn't install qemu. You need to install qemu manually, using brew:
brew install qemu
or by other mean and make it available in the path.
You first must have podman-machine installed.
It is required to have a rootful podman machine setup
via e.g. podman machine init --rootful --now.
For Fedora 40 and Rawhide we provide a COPR repository. First, enable the COPR repository:
sudo dnf -y install 'dnf-command(copr)'
sudo dnf -y copr enable gmaglione/podman-bootc
then you can install podman-bootc as usual:
sudo dnf -y install podman-bootc
Our generic dependencies:
- qemu-system-x86_64 / qemu-system-aarch64
- xorriso/osirrox
- golang
- libvirt-devel
To compile it, just run in the project directory:
makeThe core command right now is:
podman-bootc run <imagename>This command creates a new virtual machine, backed by a persistent disk image from a "self install" of the container image, and makes a SSH connection to it.
This requires SSH to be enabled by default in your base image; by default an automatically generated SSH key is injected via a systemd credential attached to qemu.
Even after you close the SSH connection, the machine continues to run.
podman-bootc list: List running VMspodman-bootc ssh: Connect to a VMpodman-bootc rm: Remove a VM
At the current time the run command uses a
bootc install
flow - where the container installs itself executed in a privileged
mode inside the podman-machine VM.
The installation target is a raw disk image is created on the host, but loopback mounted over virtiofs/9p from the podman-machine VM.
(The need for a real-root privileged container to write Linux filesystems is part of the rationale for requiring podman-machine even on Linux is that it keeps the architecture aligned with MacOS (where it's always required))
In the future, support for installing via Anaconda and bootc-image-builder will be added.