Stop, start, and restart services in a Compose stack without removing them
domain: podman.io · 6 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
cd into the Compose project directory.
Pause running services without removing containers: `podman compose stop` (add service names to limit, e.g. `podman compose stop web`).
Resume later with `podman compose start`.
Restart one or more services with `podman compose restart <service>`.
Verify state with `podman compose ps -a` (stopped containers show Exited but still exist).
Docs: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-compose.1.html and https://github.com/containers/podman-compose
Known gotchas
stop preserves the container and its writable layer for a faster start than a full `up` rebuild.
start/restart reuse the existing container; config-file changes to the service (env, ports, image) are NOT reapplied — you need up/--force-recreate for those.
Services the stopped one depends_on may not restart unless explicitly included.
Rootless podman stop sends SIGTERM then SIGKILL after the graceful timeout; long-running work may be cut off.
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