v5.1.0-RC1

This is the first release candidate for Podman v5.1.0. We expect the final release in 2 weeks (May 29 2024). Preliminary release notes follow.

Features

• Changes made by the podman update command are now persistent, and will survive container restart and be reflected in podman inspect.
• The podman update command now includes a new option, --restart, to update the restart policy of existing containers.
• Quadlet .container files now support a new key, GroupAdd, to add groups to the container.
• Container annotations are now printed by podman inspect.
• Image-based mounts using podman run --mount type=image,... now support a new option, subpath, to mount only part of the image into the container.
• A new field, healthcheck_events, has been added to containers.conf under the [engine] section to allow users to disable the generation of health_status events to avoid spamming logs on systems with many healthchecks.
• A list of images to automatically mount as volumes can now be specified in Kubernetes YAML via the io.podman.annotations.kube.image.automount/$CTRNAME annotation (where $CTRNAME is the name of the container they will be mounted into).
• The podman info command now includes the default rootless network command (pasta or slirp4netns).
• The podman ps command now shows ports from --expose that have not been published with --publish-all to improve Docker compatibility.
• The podman runlabel command now expands $HOME in the label being run to the user's home directory.
• A new alias, podman network list, has been added to the podman network ls command.

Changes

• When running Kubernetes YAML with podman kube play that does not include an imagePullPolicy and does not set a tag for the image, the image is now always pulled (#21211).
• When running Kubernetes YAML with podman kube play, pod-level restart policies are now passed down to individual containers within the pod (#20903).
• The --runroot global option can now accept paths with lengths longer than 50 characters (#22272).
• Updating containers with the podman update command now emits an event.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the --userns=keep-id:uid=0 option to podman create and podman run would generate incorrect UID mappings and cause the container to fail to start (#22078).
• Fixed a bug where podman stats could report inaccurate percentages for very large or very small values (#22064).
• Fixed a bug where bind-mount volumes defaulted to rbind instead of bind, meaning recursive mounts were allowed by default (#22107).
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine rm -f command would fail to remove Hyper-V virtual machines if they were running.
• Fixed a bug where the podman ps --sync command could sometimes fail to properly update the status of containers.
• Fixed a bug where bind-mount volumes using the :idmap option would sometimes be inaccessible with rootless Podman (#22228).
• Fixed a bug where bind-mount volumes using the :U option would have their ownership changed to the owner of the directory in the image being mounted over (#22224).
• Fixed a bug where removing multiple containers, pods, or images with the --force option did not work when multiple arguments were given to the command and one of them did not exist (#21529).
• Fixed a bug where Podman did not properly clean up old cached Machine images.
• Fixed a bug where rapidly-restarting containers with healthchecks could sometimes fail to start their healthchecks after restarting.
• Fixed a bug where nested Podman could create its pause.pid file in an incorrect directory (#22327).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would panic if an OCI runtime was configured without associated paths in containers.conf (#22561).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube down command would not respect the StopTimeout and StopSignal of containers that it stopped (#22397).
• Fixed a bug where Systemd-managed containers could be stuck in the Stopping state, unable to be restarted, if systemd killed the unit before podman stop finished stopping the container (#19629).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman farm build command would not updating manifests on the registry that were already pushed (#22647).
• Fixed a bug where rootless Podman could fail to re-exec itself when run with a custom argv[0] that is not a valid command path, as might happen when used in podmansh (#22672).
• Fixed a bug where podman machine connection URIs could be incorrect after an SSH port conflict, rendering machines inaccessible.
• Fixed a bug where the podman events command would not print an error if incorrect values were passed to its --since and --until options.

API

• A new Docker-compatible endpoint, Update, has been added for containers.
• The Compat Create endpoint for Containers now supports setting container annotations.
• The Libpod List endpoint for Images now includes additional information in its responses (image architecture, OS, and whether the image is a manifest list) (#22184 and #22185).
• The Build endpoint for Images no longer saves the build context as a temporary file, substantially improving performance and reducing required filesystem space on the server.
• Fixed a bug where the Build endpoint for Images would not clean up temporary files created by the build if an error occurred.

Misc

• Podman now detects unhandled system reboots and advises the user on proper mitigations.
• Improved debugging output for podman machine on Darwin systems when --log-level=debug is used.
• The Makefile now allows injecting extra build tags via the EXTRA_BUILD_TAGS environment variable.

v5.0.3

Security

• This release addresses CVE-2024-3727, a vulnerability in the containers/image library which allows attackers to trigger authenticated registry access on behalf of the victim user.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where podman machine start would fail if the machine had a volume with a long target path (#22226).
• Fixed a bug where podman machine start mounted volumes with paths that included dashes in the wrong location (#22505).

Misc

• Updated Buildah to v1.35.4
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.58.3
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.30.1

v5.0.2

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that could leak IPAM entries when a network was removed (#22034).
• Fixed a bug that could cause the rootless network namespace to not be cleaned up on if an error occurred during setup resulting in errors relating to a missing resolv.conf being displayed (#22168).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would use rootless network namespace logic for nested containers (#22218).
• Fixed a bug where writing to volumes on a Mac could result in EACCESS failures when using the :z or :Z volume mount options on a directory with read only files (#19852)

API

• Fixed a bug in the Compat List endpoint for Networks which could result in a server crash due to concurrent writes to a map (#22330).

v5.0.1

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where rootless containers using the Pasta network driver did not properly handle localhost DNS resolvers on the host leading to DNS resolution issues (#22044).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would warn that cgroups v1 systems were no longer supported on FreeBSD hosts.
• Fixed a bug where HyperV podman machine VMs required an SSH client be installed on the system (#22075).
• Fixed a bug that prevented the remote Podman client's podman build command from working properly when connecting from a rootless client to a rootful server (#22109).

Misc

• The HyperV driver to podman machine now fails immediately if admin privileges are not available (previously, it would only fail when it reached operations that required admin privileges).

v4.9.4

Security

• Fixed CVE-2024-1753 in Buildah and podman build which allowed a user to write files to the / directory of the host machine if selinux was not enabled.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where health check status would be updated to "healthy" before the startup delay had expired.

v5.0.0

5.0.0

Security

• Fixed CVE-2024-1753 in Buildah and podman build which allowed a user to write files to the / directory of the host machine if selinux was not enabled.

Features

• VMs created by podman machine can now use the native Apple hypervisor (applehv) when run on MacOS.
• A new command has been added, podman machine reset, which will remove all existing podman machine VMs and relevant configurations.
• The podman manifest add command now supports a new --artifact option to add OCI artifacts to a manifest list.
• The podman create, podman run, and podman push commands now support the --retry and --retry-delay options to configure retries for pushing and pulling images.
• The podman run and podman exec commands now support a new option, --preserve-fd, which allows passing a list of file descriptors into the container (as an alternative to --preserve-fds, which passes a specific number of file descriptors).
• Quadlet now supports templated units (#17744).
• The podman kube play command can now create image-based volumes using the volume.podman.io/image annotation.
• Containers created with podman kube play can now include volumes from other containers (similar to the --volumes-from option) using a new annotation, io.podman.annotations.volumes-from (#16819).
• Pods created with podman kube play can now set user namespace options through the the io.podman.annotations.userns annotation in the pod definition (#20658).
• Macvlan and ipvlan networks can adjust the name of the network interface created inside containers via the new containers.conf field interface_name (#21313).
• The --gpus option to podman create and podman run is now compatible with Nvidia GPUs (#21156).
• The --mount option to podman create and podman run supports a new mount option, no-dereference, to mount a symlink (instead of its dereferenced target) into a container (#20098).
• Podman now supports a new global option, --config, to point to a Docker configuration where we can source registry login credentials.
• The podman ps --format command now supports a new format specifier, .Label (#20957).
• The uidmapping and gidmapping options to the podman run --userns=auto option can now map to host IDs by prefixing host IDs with the @ symbol.
• Quadlet now supports systemd-style drop-in directories.
• Quadlet now supports creating pods via new .pod unit files (#17687).
• Quadlet now supports two new keys, Entrypoint and StopTimeout, in .container files (#20585 and #21134).
• Quadlet now supports specifying the Ulimit key multiple times in .container files to set more than one ulimit on a container.
• Quadlet now supports setting the Notify key to healthy in .container files, to only sdnotify that a container has started when its health check begins passing (#18189).

Breaking Changes

• The backend for the podman machine commands has seen extensive rewrites. Configuration files have changed format and VMs from Podman 4.x and earlier are no longer usable. podman machine VMs must be recreated with Podman 5.
• The podman machine init command now pulls images as OCI artifacts, instead of using HTTP. As a result, a valid policy.json file is required on the host. Windows and Mac installers have been changed to install this file.
• QEMU is no longer a supported VM provider for podman machine on Mac. Instead, the native Apple hypervisor is supported.
• The ConfigPath and Image fields are no longer provided by the podman machine inspect command. Users can also no longer use {{ .ConfigPath }} or {{ .Image }} as arguments to podman machine inspect --format.
• The output of podman inspect for containers has seen a number of breaking changes to improve Docker compatibility, including changing Entrypoint from a string to an array of strings and StopSignal from an int to a string.
• The podman inspect command for containers now returns nil for healthchecks when inspecting containers without healthchecks.
• The podman pod inspect command now outputs a JSON array regardless of the number of pods inspected (previously, inspecting a single pod would omit the array).
• It is no longer possible to create new BoltDB databases; attempting to do so will result in an error. All new Podman installations will now use the SQLite database backend. Existing BoltDB databases remain usable.
• Support for CNI networking has been gated by a build tag and will not be enabled by default.
• Podman will now print warnings when used on cgroups v1 systems. Support for cgroups v1 is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. The PODMAN_IGNORE_CGROUPSV1_WARNING environment variable can be set to suppress warnings.
• Network statistics sent over the Docker API are now per-interface, and not aggregated, improving Docker compatibility.
• The default tool for rootless networking has been swapped from slirp4netns to pasta for improved performance. As a result, networks named pasta are no longer supported.
• The --image option replaces the now deprecated --image-path option for podman machine init.
• The output of podman events --format "{{json .}}" has been changed to improve Docker compatibility, including the time and timeNano fields (#14993).
• The name of podman machine VMs and the username used within the VM are now validated and must match this regex: [a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9_.-]*.
• Using multiple filters with the List Images REST API now combines the filters with AND instead of OR, improving Docker compatibility (#18412).
• The parsing for a number of Podman CLI options which accept arrays has been changed to no longer accept string-delineated lists, and instead to require the option to be passed multiple times. These options are --annotation to podman manifest annotate and podman manifest add, the --configmap, --log-opt, and --annotation options to podman kube play, the --pubkeysfile option to podman image trust set, the --encryption-key and --decryption-key options to podman create, podman run, podman push and podman pull, the --env-file option to podman exec, the --bkio-weight-device, --device-read-bps, --device-write-bps --device-read-iops, --device-write-iops, --device, --label-file, --chrootdirs, --log-opt, and --env-file options to podman create and podman run, and the --hooks-dir and --module global options.

Changes

• The podman system reset command no longer waits for running containers to gracefully stop, and instead immediately sends SIGKILL (#21874).
• The podman network inspect command now includes running containers using the network in its output (#14126).
• The podman compose command is now supported on non-AMD64/ARM64 architectures.
• VMs created by podman machine will now pass HTTP proxy environment variables into the VM for all providers.
• The --no-trunc option to the podman kube play and podman kube generate commands has been deprecated. Podman now complies to the Kubernetes specification for annotation size, removing the need for this option.
• The DOCKER_HOST environment variable will be set by default for rootless users when podman-docker is installed.
• Connections from podman system connection and farms from podman farm are now written to a new configuration file called podman-connections.conf. As a result, Podman no longer writes to containers.conf. Existing connections from containers.conf will still be respected.
• Most podman farm subcommands (save for podman farm build) no longer need to connect to the machines in the farm to run.
• The podman create and podman run commands no longer require specifying an entrypoint on the command line when the container image does not define one. In this case, an empty command will be passed to the OCI runtime, and the resulting behavior is runtime-specific.
• The default SELinux label for content mounted from the host in podman machine VMs on Mac is now system_u:object_r:nfs_t:s0 so that it can be shared with all containers without issue.
• Newly-created VMs created by podman machine will now share a single SSH key key for access. As a result, podman machine rm --save-keys is deprecated as the key will persist by default.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the podman stats command would not show network statistics when the pasta network mode was used.
• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs using the HyperV provider could not mount shares on directories that did not yet exist.
• Fixed a bug where the podman compose command did not respect the --connection and --url options.
• Fixed a bug where the podman stop -t -1 command would wait for 0 seconds, not infinite seconds, before sending SIGKILL (#21811).
• Fixed a bug where Podman could deadlock when cleaning up a container when the slirp4netns network mode was used with a restart policy of always or `unless...

v5.0.0-RC7

This will be the final v5.0.0 release candidate. If all goes well, we expect a final release early next week. Release notes follow:

Features

• VMs created by podman machine can now use the native Apple hypervisor (applehv) when run on MacOS.
• A new command has been added, podman machine reset, which will remove all existing podman machine VMs and relevant configurations.
• The podman manifest add command now supports a new --artifact option to add OCI artifacts to a manifest list.
• The podman create, podman run, and podman push commands now support the --retry and --retry-delay options to configure retries for pushing and pulling images.
• The podman run and podman exec commands now support a new option, --preserve-fd, which allows passing a list of file descriptors into the container (as an alternative to --preserve-fds, which passes a specific number of file descriptors).
• Quadlet now supports templated units (#17744).
• The podman kube play command can now create image-based volumes using the volume.podman.io/image annotation.
• Containers created with podman kube play can now include volumes from other containers (similar to the --volumes-from option) using a new annotation, io.podman.annotations.volumes-from (#16819).
• Pods created with podman kube play can now set user namespace options through the the io.podman.annotations.userns annotation in the pod definition (#20658).
• Macvlan and ipvlan networks can adjust the name of the network interface created inside containers via the new containers.conf field interface_name (#21313).
• The --gpus option to podman create and podman run is now compatible with Nvidia GPUs (#21156).
• The --mount option to podman create and podman run supports a new mount option, no-dereference, to mount a symlink (instead of its dereferenced target) into a container (#20098).
• Podman now supports a new global option, --config, to point to a Docker configuration where we can source registry login credentials.
• The podman ps --format command now supports a new format specifier, .Label (#20957).
• The uidmapping and gidmapping options to the podman run --userns=auto option can now map to host IDs by prefixing host IDs with the @ symbol.
• Quadlet now supports systemd-style drop-in directories.
• Quadlet now supports creating pods via new .pod unit files (#17687).
• Quadlet now supports two new keys, Entrypoint and StopTimeout, in .container files (#20585 and #21134).
• Quadlet now supports specifying the Ulimit key multiple times in .container files to set more than one ulimit on a container.
• Quadlet now supports setting the Notify key to healthy in .container files, to only sdnotify that a container has started when its health check begins passing (#18189).

Breaking Changes

• The backend for the podman machine commands has seen extensive rewrites. Configuration files have changed format and VMs from Podman 4.x and earlier are no longer usable. podman machine VMs must be recreated with Podman 5.
• The podman machine init command now pulls images as OCI artifacts, instead of using HTTP. As a result, a valid policy.json file is required on the host. Windows and Mac installers have been changed to install this file.
• QEMU is no longer a supported VM provider for podman machine on Mac. Instead, the native Apple hypervisor is supported.
• The ConfigPath and Image fields are no longer provided by the podman machine inspect command. Users can also no longer use {{ .ConfigPath }} or {{ .Image }} as arguments to podman machine inspect --format.
• The output of podman inspect for containers has seen a number of breaking changes to improve Docker compatibility, including changing Entrypoint from a string to an array of strings and StopSignal from an int to a string.
• The podman inspect command for containers now returns nil for healthchecks when inspecting containers without healthchecks.
• The podman pod inspect command now outputs a JSON array regardless of the number of pods inspected (previously, inspecting a single pod would omit the array).
• It is no longer possible to create new BoltDB databases; attempting to do so will result in an error. All new Podman installations will now use the SQLite database backend. Existing BoltDB databases remain usable.
• Support for CNI networking has been gated by a build tag and will not be enabled by default.
• Podman will now print warnings when used on cgroups v1 systems. Support for cgroups v1 is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. The PODMAN_CGROUPSV1_WARNING environment variable can be set to suppress warnings.
• Network statistics sent over the Docker API are now per-interface, and not aggregated, improving Docker compatibility.
• The default tool for rootless networking has been swapped from slirp4netns to pasta for improved performance. As a result, networks named pasta are no longer supported.
• The --image option replaces the now deprecated --image-path option for podman machine init.
• The output of podman events --format "{{json .}}" has been changed to improve Docker compatibility, including the time and timeNano fields (#14993).
• The name of podman machine VMs and the username used within the VM are now validated and must match this regex: [a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9_.-]*.
• Using multiple filters with the List Images REST API now combines the filters with AND instead of OR, improving Docker compatibility (#18412).
• The parsing for a number of Podman CLI options which accept arrays has been changed to no longer accept string-delineated lists, and instead to require the option to be passed multiple times. These options are --annotation to podman manifest annotate and podman manifest add, the --configmap, --log-opt, and --annotation options to podman kube play, the --pubkeysfile option to podman image trust set, the --encryption-key and --decryption-key options to podman create, podman run, podman push and podman pull, the --env-file option to podman exec, the --bkio-weight-device, --device-read-bps, --device-write-bps --device-read-iops, --device-write-iops, --device, --label-file, --chrootdirs, --log-opt, and --env-file options to podman create and podman run, and the --hooks-dir and --module global options.

Changes

• The podman system reset command no longer waits for running containers to gracefully stop, and instead immediately sends SIGKILL (#21874).
• The podman network inspect command now includes running containers using the network in its output (#14126).
• The podman compose command is now supported on non-AMD64/ARM64 architectures.
• VMs created by podman machine will now pass HTTP proxy environment variables into the VM for all providers.
• The --no-trunc option to the podman kube play and podman kube generate commands has been deprecated. Podman now complies to the Kubernetes specification for annotation size, removing the need for this option.
• The DOCKER_HOST environment variable will be set by default for rootless users when podman-docker is installed.
• Connections from podman system connection and farms from podman farm are now written to a new configuration file called podman-connections.conf. As a result, Podman no longer writes to containers.conf. Existing connections from containers.conf will still be respected.
• Most podman farm subcommands (save for podman farm build) no longer need to connect to the machines in the farm to run.
• The podman create and podman run commands no longer require specifying an entrypoint on the command line when the container image does not define one. In this case, an empty command will be passed to the OCI runtime, and the resulting behavior is runtime-specific.
• The default SELinux label for content mounted from the host in podman machine VMs on Mac is now system_u:object_r:nfs_t:s0 so that it can be shared with all containers without issue.
• Newly-created VMs created by podman machine will now share a single SSH key key for access. As a result, podman machine rm --save-keys is deprecated as the key will persist by default.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the podman stats command would not show network statistics when the pasta network mode was used.
• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs using the HyperV provider could not mount shares on directories that did not yet exist.
• Fixed a bug where the podman compose command did not respect the --connection and --url options.
• Fixed a bug where the podman stop -t -1 command would wait for 0 seconds, not infinite seconds, before sending SIGKILL (#21811).
• Fixed a bug where Podman could deadlock when cleaning up a container when the slirp4netns network mode was used with a restart policy of always or unless-stopped or on-failure and a user namespace (#21477).
• Fixed a...

v5.0.0-RC6

This is the sixth release candidate of Podman 5.0.0. Full release notes will be available soon.

v5.0.0-RC5

This is the fifth release candidate of Podman 5.0.0. Full release notes will be available soon.

v5.0.0-rc4

This is the fourth release candidate of Podman 5.0.0. Full release notes will be available soon.