Podman Desktop Review

$ sudo tar -xvf podman-desktop-1.2.1.tar.gz -C /opt/

Click the Build button. This results in the following error:

Shell

Uploading the build context from /mypodmanplanet...Can take a while...

Error:(HTTP code 500) server error - potentially insufficient UIDs or GIDs available in user namespace (requested 262143:262143 for /var/tmp/libpod_builder2108531042/bError:Error: (HTTP code 500) server error - potentially insufficient UIDs or GIDs available in user namespace (requested 262143:262143 for /var/tmp/libpod_builder2108531042/build/.git): Check /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid: lchown /var/tmp/libpod_builder2108531042/build/.git: invalid argument 

Let’s try to build the image via the command line:

Shell

$ podman build . --tag docker.io/mydeveloperplanet/mypodmanplanet:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT -f podman-desktop/1-Dockerfile

The image is built without any problem. An issue has been raised for this problem.

At the time of writing, building an image via Podman Desktop is not possible.

Start a Container

Let’s see whether you can start the container.

Choose in the left menu the Containers tab and click the Create a Container button.

A choice menu is shown.

Choose an Existing image. The Images tab is shown.

Click the Play button on the right for the mypodmanplanet image.

A black screen is shown, and no container is started.

Start the container via CLI:

Shell

$ podman run -p 8080:8080 --name mypodmanplanet -d docker.io/mydeveloperplanet/mypodmanplanet:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT

The running container is now visible in Podman Desktop.

Test the endpoint, and this functions properly.

Shell

$ curl http://localhost:8080/hello

Hello Podman!

Same conclusion as for building the image. At the time of writing, it is not possible to start a container via Podman Desktop.

What is really interesting is the actions menu.

You can view the container logs.

The Inspect tab shows you the details of the container.

The Kube tab shows you what the Kubernetes deployment yaml file will look like.

The Terminal tab gives you access to a terminal inside the container.

You can also stop, restart, and remove the container from Podman Desktop.

Although starting the container did not work, Podman Desktop offers some interesting features that make it easier to work with containers.

Volume Mount

Remove the container from the previous section. You will create the container again, but this time with a volume mount to a specific application.properties file, which will ensure that the Spring Boot application runs on port 8082 inside the container.

Execute the following command from the root of the repository:

Shell

$ podman run -p 8080:8082 --volume ./properties/application.properties:/opt/app/application.properties:ro --name mypodmanplanet -d docker.io/mydeveloperplanet/mypodmanplanet:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT

The container is started successfully, but an error message is shown in Podman Desktop.

This error will show up regularly from now on. Restarting Podman Desktop resolves the issue. An issue has been filed for this problem. Unfortunately, the issue cannot be reproduced consistently.

The volume is not shown in the Volumes tab, but that’s because it is an anonymous volume.

Let’s create a volume and see whether this shows up in the Volumes tab.

Shell

$ podman volume create myFirstVolume

myFirstVolume

The volume is not shown in Podman Desktop. It is available via the command line, however.

Shell

$ podman volume ls

DRIVER      VOLUME NAME

local       myFirstVolume

Viewing volumes is not possible with Podman Desktop at the time of writing.

Delete the volume.

Shell

$ podman volume rm myFirstVolume

myFirstVolume

Create Pod

In this section, you will create a Pod containing two containers. The setup is based on the one used for a previous blog.

Choose in the left menu the Pods tab and click the Play Kubernetes YAML button. Select the YAML file Dockerfiles/hello-pod-2-with-env.yaml.

Click the Play button.

The Pod has started.

Check the Containers tab, and you will see the three containers which are part of the Pod.

Verify whether the endpoints are accessible.

Shell

$ curl http://localhost:8080/hello

Hello Podman!

$ curl http://localhost:8081/hello

Hello Podman!

The Pod can be stopped and deleted via Podman Desktop. Sometimes, Podman Desktop stops responding after deleting the Pod. After a restart of Podman Desktop, the Pod can be deleted without experiencing this issue.

Conclusion

Podman Desktop is a nice tool with some fine features. However, quite some bugs were encountered when using Podman Desktop (I did not create an issue for all of them). This might be due to the older version of Podman, which is available for Ubuntu, but then I would have expected that an incompatibility warning would be raised when starting Podman Desktop. However, it is a nice tool, and I will keep on using it for the time being.

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