Podman Cheat Sheet

• Finding Images
• Building Images
• Running Containers on Images
• Working with Container Processes
• Working with the Container Filesystem
• Removing Images
• Miscellaneous

For more information about podman, visit the Red Hat Developer website. This cheat sheet was written by Doug Tidwell, with huge thanks to Dan Walsh and Scott McCarty.

In the following container is either a container name or a container ID. If tag is omitted in image:tag , the default value is latest.

Finding Images

Command	Description
podman images	List all local images
podman history image:tag	Display information about how an image was built
podman login registryURL -u username [-p password]	Log in to a remote registry
podman pull registry/username/image:tag	Pull an image from a remote registry
podman search searchString	Search local cache and remote registries for images
podman logout	Log out of the current remote registry

The list of registries is defined in /etc/containers/registries.conf

Building Images

Command	Description
podman build -t image:tag .	Build and tag an image using the instructions in Docker?le in the
current directory
podman build -t image:tag -f Dockerfile2	Same as above, but with a di?erent Docker?le
podman tag image:tag image:tag2	Add an additional name to a local image
podman tag image:tag registry/username/image:tag	Same as above, but the additional name includes a remote registry
podman push registry/username/image:tag	Push an image to a remote registry

Running Containers on Images

Command	Description
podman run --rm -it [--name name] image:tag command	Run a container based on a given image.

• --rm Remove the container after it exits
• -it Connect the container to the terminal
• --name name Give the container a name
• image:tag The image used to create the container
• command A command to run (/bin/bash for example)
• -d Run the container in the background
• -p 8080:32000 Expose container port 8080 as localhost:32000
• -v /var/lib/mydb:/var/lib/db Map the /var/lib/mydb directory on localhost to a volume named /var/lib/db inside the container

Command	Description
podman commit container newImage:tag	Create a new image based on the current state of a running container
podman create [--name name] image:tag	Create (but don’t start) a container from an image
podman start container	Start an existing container from an image
podman restart container	Restart an existing container
podman wait container1 [container2… ]	Wait on one or more containers to stop
podman stop container	Stop a running container gracefully
podman kill container	Send a signal to a running container
podman rm [-f] container	Remove a container (use -f if the container is running)
podman stats container	Display a live stream of a container’s resource usage
podman inspect container	Return metadata (in JSON) about a running container

Working with Container Processes

Command	Description
podman ps [--all]	List the running containers on the system (use --all to include non-
running containers)
podman attach container	Attach to a running container and view its output or control it

• • detaches from the container but leaves it running. | | podman exec container command | Execute a command in a running container | | podman top container | Display the running processes of a container | | podman logs [-tail] container | Display the logs of a container | | podman pause container / podman unpause container | Pause/unpause all the processes in a container | | podman port container | List the port mappings from a container to localhost |

Working with the Container Filesystem

Command	Description
podman diff container	Display all the changes to a container’s ?lesystem
podman cp source target	Copy ?les and folders between a container and localhost
podman mount container / podman umount container	Mount or unmount a container’s root ?lesystem
podman import tarball	Import a tarball and save it as a ?lesystem image
podman export [-o outputFile] container	Export the container’s ?lesystem to a tar ?le
podman save [-o archiveFile] [--format docker-archive	oci-archive
podman load -i archiveFile	Load a saved image from docker-archive or another format

Removing Images

Command	Description
podman rmi [-f] image:tag	Remove a local image from local cache (use -f to force removal)
podman rmi [-f] registry/username/image:tag	Remove a remote image from local cache (use -f to force removal)

Miscellaneous

Command	Description
podman version	Display podman version information
podman info	Display information about the podman environment