Run a container with podman using Docker-compatible CLI syntax
domain: containers · 6 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Install podman (brew install podman on macOS, dnf/apt on Linux); verify with podman --version.
Run a basic container: podman run -it --rm alpine:latest sh — the docker:// image transport is the default, so a bare reference like alpine resolves via short-name handling against configured registries (e.g. docker.io, quay.io).
Podman is daemonless by default (rootless on most installs); there is no long-running podman daemon.
Map ports with -p hostPort:containerPort (only effective on bridge or pasta networking); use -P to publish every EXPOSE port to a random host port.
Pass -d to detach long-lived services, --name to name the container, -e or --env for environment, and --network for the network mode.
Verify the result with podman ps.
Known gotchas
On macOS and Windows a Linux VM managed by podman machine is required because containers do not run natively on non-Linux hosts.
Remote clients (macOS/Windows excluding WSL2) only support the docker:// image transport — docker-archive, docker-daemon, and oci-archive are unavailable.
Resource limits such as --memory, --cpus, and --pids-limit are not supported on cgroups v1 rootless systems; rootless users may hit permission errors (see podman troubleshooting #26).
A container environment file is written to /run/.containerenv, but not when a volume is mounted on /run.
Default networking is a root bridge for rootful and pasta for rootless; --network host carries security risk.
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