Podman is a command-line utility for running and managing containers on Linux systems. It is an alternative to Docker that provides many of the same features and functionality, but without requiring a daemon to be running in the background. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and use Podman to run containers on Rocky Linux 8.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, make sure you have a clean installation of Rocky Linux 8 and that you are logged in as a user with sudo privileges. You will also need to have the dnf package manager installed on your system.

To check if dnf is installed, you can use the following command:

dnf --version

If dnf is not installed, you can install it by running the following command:

sudo dnf install dnf

Once dnf is installed, you are ready to proceed with installing Podman.

Step 1: Install Podman

To install Podman on Rocky Linux 8, we will use the dnf package manager. To install Podman, run the following command:

sudo dnf install podman

This will download and install the Podman package and all of its dependencies. The installation process may take a few minutes to complete.

Once the installation is finished, you can verify that Podman is installed and working by running the following command:

podman --version

This will print the version of Podman that is installed on your system.

Step 2: Run a container

With Podman installed, you can start running containers on your Rocky Linux 8 system. To run a container, you can use the podman run command, followed by the image name and any options or arguments.

For example, to run the hello-world image, you can use the following command:

podman run hello-world

This will download the hello-world image from the Docker registry, if it is not already present on your system, and run a container based on that image. The container will print a message and then exit.

To run a container in the background, you can use the -d option:

podman run -d hello-world

This will run the hello-world container in the background, and print the container ID.

To run a container with a specific name, you can use the --name option:

podman run --name my-hello-world hello-world

This will run the hello-world container with the name my-hello-world.

Step 3: List containers

To view the containers that are currently running on your system, you can use the podman ps command. This command will show a list of containers, including their ID, name, image, and status.

For example, to list the containers that are currently running on your system, you can use the podman ps command:

podman ps

This will show a list of containers that are currently running, along with their ID, name, image, and status.

To show all containers, including those that are stopped, you can use the -a option:

podman ps -a

This will show a list of all containers, including those that are stopped or exited.

Step 4: Stop and start containers

To stop a running container, you can use the podman stop command, followed by the container ID or name. For example, to stop the hello-world container, you can use the following command:

podman stop hello-world

This will stop the hello-world container and terminate its processes.

To start a stopped container, you can use the podman start command, followed by the container ID or name. For example, to start the hello-world container, you can use the following command:

podman start hello-world

This will start the hello-world container and resume its processes.

Step 5: Remove containers

To remove a container from your system, you can use the podman rm command, followed by the container ID or name. For example, to remove the hello-world container, you can use the following command:

podman rm hello-world

This will remove the hello-world container and delete its data and configuration.

To remove all containers, including those that are stopped or exited, you can use the -a option:

podman rm -a

This will remove all containers from your system.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to install and use Podman to run containers on Rocky Linux 8. You learned how to run, stop, start, and remove containers, and how to list the containers that are currently running on your system. With Podman installed and configured, you can start running and managing containers on your Rocky Linux 8 system.