v5.6.0-RC2

Features

• A new set of commands for managing Quadlets has been added as podman quadlet install (install a new Quadlet for the current user), podman quadlet list (list installed Quadlets), podman quadlet print (print the contents of a Quadlet file), and podman quadlet rm (remove a Quadlet). These commands are presently not available with the remote Podman client - we expect support for this to arrive in a future release.
• Quadlet .container units can now specify environment variables without values in the Environment= key, retrieving the value from the host when the container is started (#26247).
• Quadlet .pod units now support two new keys, Label= (to set labels on the created pod) and ExitPolicy= (to set exit policy for the created pod) (#25961 and #25596).
• Quadlet .image units now support a new key, Policy=, to set pull policy for the image (e.g. pull always, pull only if newer version available) (#26446).
• Quadlet .network units now support a new key, InterfaceName=, to specify the name of the network interface created.
• The podman machine init command now supports a new option, --swap, enabling swap in the created virtual machine and setting it to a given size (in megabytes) (#15980).
• The --mount option to podman create and podman run now supports dest= as a valid alias for destination=.
• The podman kube play command can now restrict container execution to specific CPU cores and specific memory nodes using the io.podman.annotations.cpuset/$ctrname and io.podman.annotations.memory-nodes/$ctrname annotations (#26172).
• The podman kube play command now supports the lifecycle.stopSignal field in Pod YAML, allowing the signal used to stop containers to be specified (#25389).
• The podman artifact suite of commands for interacting with OCI artifacts is now available in the remote Podman client and the bindings for the REST API.
• The podman volume import and podman volume export commands are now available in the remote Podman client (#26049).
• The --build-context option to podman build is now supported by the remote Podman client (#23433).
• The podman volume create command now accepts two new options, --uid and --gid, to set the UID and GID the volume will be created with.
• The podman secret create command now has a new option, --ignore, causing the command to succeed even if a secret with the given name already exists.
• The podman pull command now has a new option, --policy, to configure pull policy.
• The --mount type=artifact option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now allows the filename of the artifact in the container to be set using the name= option (e.g. podman run --mount type=artifact,name=$NAME,...).
• The --tmpfs option to podman create and podman run now allows a new option, noatime, to be passed (e.g. podman run --tmpfs /run:noatime ...) (#26102).
• The podman update command now has a new option, --latest, to update the latest container instead of specifying a specific container (#26380).
• A new command, podman buildx inspect, has been added to improve Docker compatibility (#13014).

Changes

• The podman artifact suite of commands for interacting with OCI artifacts is now considered stable.
• For users running podman machine VMs using the libkrun provider on an M3 or newer host running macOS 15+, nested virtualization is enabled by default.
• When creating podman machine VMs on Windows using the WSL v2 provider, images are now pulled as artifacts from quay.io/podman/machine-os, matching the behavior of other VM providers.
• Signal forwarding done by the --sig-proxy option to podman run and podman attach is now more robust to races and no longer forwards the SIGSTOP signal.
• The podman system check --quick command now skips checking layer digests.
• Podman on Windows using the WSLv2 provider now prefers the WSL executable in C:\Program Files\Windows Subsystem for Linux\wsl.exe over the one in WindowsApps, avoiding common “access denied” issues (#25787).
• The --mount type=artifact option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now mounts artifacts containing a only a single blob as a file at the given destination path if the path does not exist in the image.
• The podman volume export command now refuses to export to STDOUT if it is a TTY (#26506).
• When generating Quadlet units with options known to be problematic when used with Podman, such as User=, Group=, and DynamicUser= in the [Service] section of a unit, Quadlet will now warn the user of the potential incompatibility (#26543).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the --security-opt unmask= option to podman create and podman run did not allow comma-separated lists of paths to be passed, instead only allowing a single path.
• Fixed a bug where stopping a Podman container could unintentionally kill non-Podman processes if the PID of an exec session started inside the container was reused for a new process while the container was running (#25104).
• Fixed a bug where podman machine init could fail if run in a Podman container (#25950).
• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs would sometimes receive incorrect timezone information.
• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs created with a custom username would not have lingering enabled.
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init command on Windows when using the WSL 2 provider did not reliably determine if WSL was installed (#25523).
• Fixed a bug where the name of Quadlet .pod units that did not specify the PodName= key was set incorrectly (#26062).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet .container units joining a pod specified in a .pod unit would fail as the pod name was set incorrectly when creating the container (#26105).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet would not generate RequiresMountsFor when mounting a .volume unit with Type=bind set into a container (#26125).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet dropin files were not correctly overwritten by new dropin files with the same name further along the hierarchy if the two dropin files did not share a parent directory (#26555).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet would sometimes not print warnings when failing to parse units (#26542).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet .pod files did not include the last Environment= key in the [Service] section in the generated systemd service (#26521).
• Fixed a bug where starting a container with already-running dependencies would fail.
• Fixed a bug where OCI hooks in a directory specified with --hooks-dir would fail to run when containers were restarted (#17935).
• Fixed a bug where the --mount option to podman create and podman run required the type= option to be specified, instead of defaulting to volume when it was not present (#26101).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would fail on Windows when specifying an absolute path to YAML files (#26350).
• Fixed a bug where the --security-opt seccomp= option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create could error on Windows when given a path to a Seccomp profile (#26558).
• Fixed a bug where the --blkio-weight-device, --device-read-bps, --device-write-bps, --device-read-iops, and --device-write-iops options to podman create and podman run incorrectly accepted non-block devices.
• Fixed a bug where the podman build command handled the --ignorefile option differently from the buildah bud command (#25746).
• Fixed a bug where the podman rm -f command could return an error when trying to remove a running container whose conmon process had been killed (#26640).
• Fixed a bug where the podman inspect command did not correctly display log size for containers when log_size_max was set in containers.conf.

API

• A full set of API endpoints for interacting with artifacts has been added, including inspecting artifacts (GET /libpod/artifacts/{name}/json), listing all artifacts (GET /libpod/artifacts/json), pulling an artifact (POST /libpod/artifacts/pull), removing an artifact (DELETE /libpod/artifacts/{name}), adding an artifact (or appending to an existing artifact) from a tar file in the request body (POST /libpod/artifacts/add), pushing an artifact to a registry (/libpod/artifacts/{name}/push), and retrieving the contents of an ar...

v5.6.0-RC1

Features

• A new set of commands for managing Quadlets has been added as podman quadlet install (install a new Quadlet for the current user), podman quadlet list (list installed Quadlets), podman quadlet print (print the contents of a Quadlet file), and podman quadlet rm (remove a Quadlet). These commands are presently not available with the remote Podman client - we expect support for this to arrive in a future release.
• Quadlet .container units can now specify environment variables without values in the Environment= key, retrieving the value from the host when the container is started (#26247).
• Quadlet .pod units now support two new keys, Label= (to set labels on the created pod) and ExitPolicy= (to set exit policy for the created pod) (#25961 and #25596).
• Quadlet .image units now support a new key, Policy=, to set pull policy for the image (e.g. pull always, pull only if newer version available) (#26446).
• Quadlet .network units now support a new key, InterfaceName=, to specify the name of the network interface created.
• The podman machine init command now supports a new option, --swap, enabling swap in the created virtual machine and setting it to a given size (in megabytes) (#15980).
• The --mount option to podman create and podman run now supports dest= as a valid alias for destination=.
• The podman kube play command can now restrict container execution to specific CPU cores and specific memory nodes using the io.podman.annotations.cpuset/$ctrname and io.podman.annotations.memory-nodes/$ctrname annotations (#26172).
• The podman kube play command now supports the lifecycle.stopSignal field in Pod YAML, allowing the signal used to stop containers to be specified (#25389).
• The podman volume import and podman volume export commands are now available in the remote Podman client (#26049).
• The --build-context option to podman build is now supported by the remote Podman client (#23433).
• The podman volume create command now accepts two new options, --uid and --gid, to set the UID and GID the volume will be created with.
• The podman secret create command now has a new option, --ignore, causing the command to succeed even if a secret with the given name already exists.
• The podman pull command now has a new option, --policy, to configure pull policy.
• The --mount type=artifact option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now allows the filename of the artifact in the container to be set using the name= option (e.g. podman run --mount type=artifact,name=$NAME,...).
• The --tmpfs option to podman create and podman run now allows a new option, noatime, to be passed (e.g. podman run --tmpfs /run:noatime ...) (#26102).
• The podman update command now has a new option, --latest, to update the latest container instead of specifying a specific container (#26380).
• A new command, podman buildx inspect, has been added to improve Docker compatibility (#13014).

Changes

• For users running podman machine VMs using the libkrun provider on an M3 or newer host running macOS 15+, nested virtualization is enabled by default.
• When creating podman machine VMs on Windows using the WSL v2 provider, images are now pulled as artifacts from quay.io/podman/machine-os, matching the behavior of other VM providers.
• Signal forwarding done by the --sig-proxy option to podman run and podman attach is now more robust to races and no longer forwards the SIGSTOP signal.
• The podman system check --quick command now skips checking layer digests.
• Podman on Windows using the WSLv2 provider now prefers the WSL executable in C:\Program Files\Windows Subsystem for Linux\wsl.exe over the one in WindowsApps, avoiding common “access denied” issues (#25787).
• The --mount type=artifact option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now mounts artifacts containing a only a single blob as a file at the given destination path if the path does not exist in the image.
• The podman volume export command now refuses to export to STDOUT if it is a TTY (#26506).
• When generating Quadlet units with options known to be problematic when used with Podman, such as User=, Group=, and DynamicUser= in the [Service] section of a unit, Quadlet will now warn the user of the potential incompatibility (#26543).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the --security-opt unmask= option to podman create and podman run did not allow comma-separated lists of paths to be passed, instead only allowing a single path.
• Fixed a bug where stopping a Podman container could unintentionally kill non-Podman processes if the PID of an exec session started inside the container was reused for a new process while the container was running (#25104).
• Fixed a bug where podman machine init could fail if run in a Podman container (#25950).
• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs would sometimes receive incorrect timezone information.
• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs created with a custom username would not have lingering enabled.
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init command on Windows when using the WSL 2 provider did not reliably determine if WSL was installed (#25523).
• Fixed a bug where the name of Quadlet .pod units that did not specify the PodName= key was set incorrectly (#26062).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet .container units joining a pod specified in a .pod unit would fail as the pod name was set incorrectly when creating the container (#26105).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet would not generate RequiresMountsFor when mounting a .volume unit with Type=bind set into a container (#26125).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet dropin files were not correctly overwritten by new dropin files with the same name further along the hierarchy if the two dropin files did not share a parent directory (#26555).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet would sometimes not print warnings when failing to parse units (#26542).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet .pod files did not include the last Environment= key in the [Service] section in the generated systemd service (#26521).
• Fixed a bug where starting a container with already-running dependencies would fail.
• Fixed a bug where OCI hooks in a directory specified with --hooks-dir would fail to run when containers were restarted (#17935).
• Fixed a bug where the --mount option to podman create and podman run required the type= option to be specified, instead of defaulting to volume when it was not present (#26101).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would fail on Windows when specifying an absolute path to YAML files (#26350).
• Fixed a bug where the --security-opt seccomp= option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create could error on Windows when given a path to a Seccomp profile (#26558).
• Fixed a bug where the --blkio-weight-device, --device-read-bps, --device-write-bps, --device-read-iops, and --device-write-iops options to podman create and podman run incorrectly accepted non-block devices.
• Fixed a bug where the podman build command handled the --ignorefile option differently from the buildah bud command (#25746).
• Fixed a bug where the podman rm -f command could return an error when trying to remove a running container whose conmon process had been killed (#26640).
• Fixed a bug where the podman inspect command did not correctly display log size for containers when log_size_max was set in containers.conf.

API

• A full set of API endpoints for interacting with artifacts has been added, including inspecting artifacts (GET /libpod/artifacts/{name}/json), listing all artifacts (GET /libpod/artifacts/json), pulling an artifact (POST /libpod/artifacts/pull), removing an artifact (DELETE /libpod/artifacts/{name}), adding an artifact (or appending to an existing artifact) from a tar file in the request body (POST /libpod/artifacts/add), pushing an artifact to a registry (/libpod/artifacts/{name}/push), and retrieving the contents of an artifact (GET /libpod/artifacts/{name}/extract).
• The Compat Create endpoint for Containers now accepts a new parameter, HostConfig.CgroupnsMode, to specify the cgroup namespace mode of the created container.
• The Compat Create endpoint for Containers now ...

v5.5.2

Security

• This release addresses CVE-2025-6032, in which the TLS connection used to pull VM images for podman machine was, by default, not validated, allowing connections to servers with invalid certificates by default and potentially allowing a Man in the Middle attack.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where Podman could panic after a reboot on systems with pods containing containers (#26469).

v5.5.1

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where containers mounting a volume to / could overmount important directories such as /proc causing start and/or runtime failures due to an issue with mount ordering (#26161).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet .pod units could fail to start due to their storage not being mounted (#26190).
• Fixed a bug where containers joined to a network with DNS enabled would not include the host's search domains in their resolv.conf (#24713).
• Fixed a bug where the --dns-opt option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create would append options to the container's resolv.conf, instead of replacing them (#22399).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would add an empty network alias for containers created with no name specified, causing Netavark to emit extraneous warnings.
• Fixed a bug where the podman system df command would panic when one or more containers were created using a root filesystem (the --rootfs option to podman create and podman run) instead of from an image (#26224).
• Fixed a bug where the log_tag field in containers.conf would override the --log-opt tag=value option to podman create and podman run (#26236).
• Fixed a bug where the podman volume rm and podman volume inspect commands would incorrectly handle volume names containing the _ character when the SQLite database backend was in use (#26168).
• Fixed a bug where the Podman remote client on Windows was unable to mount local folders into containers using overlay mounts (-v source:destination:O) (#25988).

API

• Fixed a bug in the Libpod Create API for Containers where rlimits specified with a value of -1 were causing errors, instead of being interpreted as the maximum possible value (#24886).
• Fixed a bug in the Compat Create API for Containers where specifying an entrypoint of [] (an empty array) was ignored, instead of setting an empty entrypoint (#26078).

Misc

• Updated Buildah to v1.40.1
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.63.1

v5.5.0

Features

• A new command has been added, podman machine cp, to copy files into a running podman machine VM.
• A new command has been added, podman artifact extract, to copy some or all of the contents of an OCI artifact to a location on disk.
• The --mount option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now supports a new mount type, --mount type=artifact, to mount OCI artifacts into containers.
• The podman artifact add command now features two new options, --append (to add new files to an existing artifact) and --file-type (to specify the MIME type of the file added to the artifact) (#25884).
• The podman artifact rm command now features a new option, --all, to remove all artifacts in the local store.
• The --filter option to podman pause, podman ps, podman restart, podman rm, podman start, podman stop, and podman unpause now accepts a new filter, command, which filters on the first element (argv[0]) of the command run in the container.
• The podman exec command now supports a new option, --cidfile, to specify the ID of the container to exec into via a file (#21256).
• The podman kube generate and podman kube play commands now supports a new annotation, io.podman.annotation.pids-limit/$containername, preserving the PID limit for containers across kube generate and kube play (#24418).
• Quadlet .container units now support three new keys, Memory= (set maximum memory for the created container), ReloadCmd (execute a command via systemd ExecReload), and ReloadSignal (kill the container with the given signal via systemd ExecReload) (#22036).
• Quadlet .container, .image, and .build units now support two new keys, Retry (number of times to retry pulling image on failure) and RetryDelay (delay between retries) (#25109).
• Quadlet .pod units now support a new key, HostName=, to set the pod's hostname (#25639).
• Quadlet files now support a new option, UpheldBy, in the Install section, corresponding to the systemd Upholds option.
• The names of Quadlet units specified as systemd dependencies are now automatically translated - e.g. Wants=my.container is now valid.
• Podman now generates events for the creation and removal of secrets (#24030).
• A new global option has been added to Podman, --cdi-spec-dir, to specify additional search paths for CDI specs to the CDI loader (#18292 and #25691).
• The podman build command now supports a new option, --inherit-labels (defaults to true), which controls whether labels are inherited from the base image or base stages.
• The podman update command now supports two new options, --env and --unsetenv, to alter the environment variables of existing containers (#24875).

Breaking Changes

• Due to changes in Docker API types, two small breaking changes have been made in the Go bindings for the REST API. The containers.Commit() function now returns a new struct (types.IDResponse) with identical contents, and the containers.ExecCreate function's handlers.ExecCreateConfig parameter now contains a different embedded struct, potentially requiring changes to how it is assigned to.

Changes

• Podman now requires at least Go 1.23 to build.
• Healthchecks have been refactored to avoid writing to the database as much as possible, greatly improving performance on systems with many simultaneous healthchecks running.
• Healthchecks now have a new status, stopped, which is reported if the container the healthcheck was run on stopped before the check could be completed (#25276).
• Containers in pods are now stopped in order based on their dependencies, with the infra container being stopped last, preventing application containers from losing networking before they are stopped due to the infra container stopping prematurely.
• Due to challenges with handling automatic installation, the Windows installer no longer installs WSLv2 or Hyper-V.
• Quadlet will now print warnings when skipping lines to help identify malformed Quadlet files (#25339).
• Creating podman machine VMs with a host mount over the VM's /tmp directory is no longer allowed (#18230).
• The podman logs command now allows options to be specified after the container name (e.g. podman logs $containername --follow) (#25653).
• Podman, by default, no longer uses a pause image for pod infra and service containers. Instead, a root filesystem containing only the catatonit binary will be used (#23292).
• The podman system reset command no longer removes the user's podman.sock API socket.
• When using Netavark v1.15 and higher, containers in non-default networks will no longer have the default search domain dns.podman added. Queries resolving such names will still work.
• Stopping a Quadlet .network unit will now delete the network (if no containers are actively using it) (#23678).
• For security hardening, the /proc/interrupts and /sys/devices/system/cpu/$CPU/thermal_throttle paths are now masked by default in containers (#25634).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where healthchecks would still run while a container was paused (#24590).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client on Windows could not mount named volumes with a single-character name into containers (#25218).
• Fixed a bug where mounting an image could panic when run without CAP_SYS_ADMIN (#25241).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would not report errors when setting up healthchecks (#25034).
• Fixed a bug where the podman exec command would not add the additional groups of the user the exec session was run as unless the user was explicitly added with the --user option (#25610).
• Fixed a bug where errors during the podman network connect and podman network disconnect commands could create errors in the database which would cause podman inspect on the container to fail.
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube generate command did not correctly generate YAML for volume mounts using a subpath.
• Fixed a bug where the podman system df command could show a negative reclaimable size.
• Fixed a bug where accessing a rootful podman machine VM that was not podman-machine-default (the default VM) with the podman machine ssh command would put the user into the rootless shell (#25332).
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init would report nonsensical memory values in error messages when trying to create a machine with more memory than the system.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman start --attach command would incorrectly print an error when run on a container created with the --rm option (#25965).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman pull command could hang and leak memory if the server was unexpectedly stopped or encountered an error during a pull.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman cp command would, on Windows, often fail to copy files into the container due to improper handling of Windows paths (#14862).
• Fixed a bug where the podman container clone command did not correctly copy healthcheck settings to the new container (#21630).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would fail to start empty pods (#25786).
• Fixed a bug where the podman volume ls command did not output headers when no volumes were present (#25911).
• Fixed a bug where healthcheck configuration provided by a container's image could not be overridden unless the --health-cmd option was specified when creating the container (#20212).
• Fixed a bug where the --user option to podman create and podman run could not be used with users added to the container by the --hostuser option (#25805).
• Fixed a bug where the podman system reset command on FreeBSD would incorrectly print an error.
• Fixed a bug where stopping the podman machine start command with SIGINT could result in machine state being incorrectly set to "Starting" (#24416).
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine start command would fail when starting a VM with volume mounts containing spaces using the HyperV machine provider (#25500).

API

• Fixed a bug where the Compat Create API for Containers ignored ulimits specified in the request when Podman was run rootless ([#25881...

v5.5.0-RC2

This is the second release candidate of Podman v5.5.0. Preliminary release notes follow:

Features

• A new command has been added, podman machine cp, to copy files into a running podman machine VM.
• A new command has been added, podman artifact extract, to copy some or all of the contents of an OCI artifact to a location on disk.
• The --mount option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now supports a new mount type, --mount type=artifact, to mount OCI artifacts into containers.
• The podman artifact add command now features two new options, --append (to add new files to an existing artifact) and --file-type (to specify the MIME type of the file added to the artifact) (#25884).
• The podman artifact rm command now features a new option, --all, to remove all artifacts in the local store.
• The --filter option to podman pause, podman ps, podman restart, podman rm, podman start, podman stop, and podman unpause now accepts a new filter, command, which filters on the first element (argv[0]) of the command run in the container.
• The podman exec command now supports a new option, --cidfile, to specify the ID of the container to exec into via a file (#21256).
• The podman kube generate and podman kube play commands now supports a new annotation, io.podman.annotation.pids-limit/$containername, preserving the PID limit for containers across kube generate and kube play (#24418).
• Quadlet .container units now support three new keys, Memory= (set maximum memory for the created container), ReloadCmd (execute a command via systemd ExecReload), and ReloadSignal (kill the container with the given signal via systemd ExecReload) (#22036).
• Quadlet .container, .image, and .build units now support two new keys, Retry (number of times to retry pulling image on failure) and RetryDelay (delay between retries) (#25109).
• Quadlet .pod units now support a new key, HostName=, to set the pod's hostname (#25639).
• Quadlet files now support a new option, UpheldBy, in the Install section, corresponding to the systemd Upholds option.
• The names of Quadlet units specified as systemd dependencies are now automatically translated - e.g. Wants=my.container is now valid.
• Podman now generates events for the creation and removal of secrets (#24030).
• A new global option has been added to Podman, --cdi-spec-dir, to specify additional search paths for CDI specs to the CDI loader (#18292 and #25691).
• The podman build command now supports a new option, --inherit-labels (defaults to true), which controls whether labels are inherited from the base image or base stages.
• The podman update command now supports two new options, --env and --unsetenv, to alter the environment variables of existing containers (#24875).

Breaking Changes

• Due to changes in Docker API types, two small breaking changes have been made in the Go bindings for the REST API. The containers.Commit() function now returns a new struct (types.IDResponse) with identical contents, and the containers.ExecCreate function's handlers.ExecCreateConfig parameter now contains a different embedded struct, potentially requiring changes to how it is assigned to.

Changes

• Podman now requires at least Go 1.23 to build.
• Healthchecks have been refactored to avoid writing to the database as much as possible, greatly improving performance on systems with many simultaneous healthchecks running.
• Healthchecks now have a new status, stopped, which is reported if the container the healthcheck was run on stopped before the check could be completed (#25276).
• Containers in pods are now stopped in order based on their dependencies, with the infra container being stopped last, preventing application containers from losing networking before they are stopped due to the infra container stopping prematurely.
• Due to challenges with handling automatic installation, the Windows installer no longer installs WSLv2 or Hyper-V.
• Quadlet will now print warnings when skipping lines to help identify malformed Quadlet files (#25339).
• Creating podman machine VMs with a host mount over the VM's /tmp directory is no longer allowed (#18230).
• The podman logs command now allows options to be specified after the container name (e.g. podman logs $containername --follow) (#25653).
• Podman, by default, no longer uses a pause image for pod infra and service containers. Instead, a root filesystem containing only the catatonit binary will be used (#23292).
• The podman system reset command no longer removes the user's podman.sock API socket.
• When using Netavark v1.15 and higher, containers in non-default networks will no longer have the default search domain dns.podman added. Queries resolving such names will still work.
• Stopping a Quadlet .network unit will now delete the network (if no containers are actively using it) (#23678).
• For security hardening, the /proc/interrupts and /sys/devices/system/cpu/$CPU/thermal_throttle paths are now masked by default in containers (#25634).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where healthchecks would still run while a container was paused (#24590).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client on Windows could not mount named volumes with a single-character name into containers (#25218).
• Fixed a bug where mounting an image could panic when run without CAP_SYS_ADMIN (#25241).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would not report errors when setting up healthchecks (#25034).
• Fixed a bug where the podman exec command would not add the additional groups of the user the exec session was run as unless the user was explicitly added with the --user option (#25610).
• Fixed a bug where errors during the podman network connect and podman network disconnect commands could create errors in the database which would cause podman inspect on the container to fail.
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube generate command did not correctly generate YAML for volume mounts using a subpath.
• Fixed a bug where the podman system df command could show a negative reclaimable size.
• Fixed a bug where accessing a rootful podman machine VM that was not podman-machine-default (the default VM) with the podman machine ssh command would put the user into the rootless shell (#25332).
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init would report nonsensical memory values in error messages when trying to create a machine with more memory than the system.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman start --attach command would incorrectly print an error when run on a container created with the --rm option (#25965).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman pull command could hang and leak memory if the server was unexpectedly stopped or encountered an error during a pull.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman cp command would, on Windows, often fail to copy files into the container due to improper handling of Windows paths (#14862).
• Fixed a bug where the podman container clone command did not correctly copy healthcheck settings to the new container (#21630).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would fail to start empty pods (#25786).
• Fixed a bug where the podman volume ls command did not output headers when no volumes were present (#25911).
• Fixed a bug where healthcheck configuration provided by a container's image could not be overridden unless the --health-cmd option was specified when creating the container (#20212).
• Fixed a bug where the --user option to podman create and podman run could not be used with users added to the container by the --hostuser option (#25805).
• Fixed a bug where the podman system reset command on FreeBSD would incorrectly print an error.
• Fixed a bug where stopping the podman machine start command with SIGINT could result in machine state being incorrectly set to "Starting" (#24416).

API

• Fixed a bug where the Compat Create API for Containers ignored ulimits specified in the request when Podman was run rootless (#25881).

Misc

• Erroneous errors from the ExecStartAndAttach() function ...

v5.5.0-RC1

Features

• A new command has been added, podman machine cp, to copy files into a running podman machine VM.
• A new command has been added, podman artifact extract, to copy some or all of the contents of an OCI artifact to a location on disk.
• The --mount option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now supports a new mount type, --mount type=artifact, to mount OCI artifacts into containers.
• The podman artifact add command now features two new options, --append (to add new files to an existing artifact) and --file-type (to specify the MIME type of the file added to the artifact) (#25884).
• The podman artifact rm command now features a new option, --all, to remove all artifacts in the local store.
• The --filter option to podman pause, podman ps, podman restart, podman rm, podman start, podman stop, and podman unpause now accepts a new filter, command, which filters on the first element (argv[0]) of the command run in the container.
• The podman exec command now supports a new option, --cidfile, to specify the ID of the container to exec into via a file (#21256).
• The podman kube generate and podman kube play commands now supports a new annotation, io.podman.annotation.pids-limit/$containername, preserving the PID limit for containers across kube generate and kube play (#24418).
• Quadlet .container units now support three new keys, Memory= (set maximum memory for the created container), ReloadCmd (execute a command via systemd ExecReload), and ReloadSignal (kill the container with the given signal via systemd ExecReload) (#22036).
• Quadlet .container, .image, and .build units now support two new keys, Retry (number of times to retry pulling image on failure) and RetryDelay (delay between retries) (#25109).
• Quadlet .pod units now support a new key, HostName=, to set the pod's hostname (#25639).
• Quadlet files now support a new option, UpheldBy, in the Install section, corresponding to the systemd Upholds option.
• The names of Quadlet units specified as systemd dependencies are now automatically translated - e.g. Wants=my.container is now valid.
• Podman now generates events for the creation and removal of secrets (#24030).
• A new global option has been added to Podman, --cdi-spec-dir, to specify additional search paths for CDI specs to the CDI loader (#18292 and #25691).
• The podman build command now supports a new option, --inherit-labels (defaults to true), which controls whether labels are inherited from the base image or base stages.
• The podman update command now supports two new options, --env and --unsetenv, to alter the environment variables of existing containers (#24875).

Breaking Changes

• Due to changes in Docker API types, two small breaking changes have been made in the Go bindings for the REST API. The containers.Commit() function now returns a new struct (types.IDResponse) with identical contents, and the containers.ExecCreate function's handlers.ExecCreateConfig parameter now contains a different embedded struct, potentially requiring changes to how it is assigned to.

Changes

• Podman now requires at least Go 1.23 to build.
• Healthchecks have been refactored to avoid writing to the database as much as possible, greatly improving performance on systems with many simultaneous healthchecks running.
• Healthchecks now have a new status, stopped, which is reported if the container the healthcheck was run on stopped before the check could be completed (#25276).
• Containers in pods are now stopped in order based on their dependencies, with the infra container being stopped last, preventing application containers from losing networking before they are stopped due to the infra container stopping prematurely.
• Due to challenges with handling automatic installation, the Windows installer no longer installs WSLv2 or Hyper-V.
• Quadlet will now print warnings when skipping lines to help identify malformed Quadlet files (#25339).
• Creating podman machine VMs with a host mount over the VM's /tmp directory is no longer allowed (#18230).
• The podman logs command now allows options to be specified after the container name (e.g. podman logs $containername --follow) (#25653).
• Podman, by default, no longer uses a pause image for pod infra and service containers. Instead, a root filesystem containing only the catatonit binary will be used (#23292).
• The podman system reset command no longer removes the user's podman.sock API socket.
• When using Netavark v1.15 and higher, containers in non-default networks will no longer have the default search domain dns.podman added. Queries resolving such names will still work.
• Stopping a Quadlet .network unit will now delete the network (if no containers are actively using it) (#23678).
• For security hardening, the /proc/interrupts and /sys/devices/system/cpu/$CPU/thermal_throttle paths are now masked by default in containers (#25634).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where healthchecks would still run while a container was paused (#24590).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client on Windows could not mount named volumes with a single-character name into containers (#25218).
• Fixed a bug where mounting an image could panic when run without CAP_SYS_ADMIN (#25241).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would not report errors when setting up healthchecks (#25034).
• Fixed a bug where the podman exec command would not add the additional groups of the user the exec session was run as unless the user was explicitly added with the --user option (#25610).
• Fixed a bug where errors during the podman network connect and podman network disconnect commands could create errors in the database which would cause podman inspect on the container to fail.
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube generate command did not correctly generate YAML for volume mounts using a subpath.
• Fixed a bug where the podman system df command could show a negative reclaimable size.
• Fixed a bug where accessing a rootful podman machine VM that was not podman-machine-default (the default VM) with the podman machine ssh command would put the user into the rootless shell (#25332).
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init would report nonsensical memory values in error messages when trying to create a machine with more memory than the system.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman cp command would, on Windows, often fail to copy files into the container due to improper handling of Windows paths (#14862).
• Fixed a bug where the podman container clone command did not correctly copy healthcheck settings to the new container (#21630).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would fail to start empty pods (#25786).
• Fixed a bug where the podman volume ls command did not output headers when no volumes were present (#25911).
• Fixed a bug where healthcheck configuration provided by a container's image could not be overridden unless the --health-cmd option was specified when creating the container (#20212).
• Fixed a bug where the --user option to podman create and podman run could not be used with users added to the container by the --hostuser option (#25805).

API

• Fixed a bug where the Compat Create API for Containers ignored ulimits specified in the request when Podman was run rootless (#25881).

Misc

• Erroneous errors from the ExecStartAndAttach() function in the Go bindings for the REST API have been silenced, where the function would incorrectly report errors when stdin was consumed after the exec session was stopped (#25344).
• Updated Buildah to v1.40.0
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.63.0
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.35.0
• Updated the containers/storage library to v1.58.0

v5.4.2

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the podman import command could not import images compressed with algorithms other than gzip (#25593).
• Fixed a bug where the podman cp command could deadlock when copying into a non-empty volume on a container that is not running (#25585).

API

• Fixed a bug where the default values for some fields in the Libpod Create endpoint for Containers did not have sensible defaults for some healthcheck fields, causing unrestricted log growth for containers which did not set these fields (#25473).

Misc

• Updated vendored Buildah to v1.39.4
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.62.3
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.34.3
• Updated the containers/storage library to v1.57.2

v5.4.1

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where volume quotas were not being applied (#25368).
• Fixed a bug where the --pid-limit=-1 option did not function properly with containers using the runc OCI runtime.
• Fixed a bug where the podman artifact pull command did not respect the --retry-delay option.
• Fixed a bug where Podman would leak a file and directory for every container created.
• Fixed a bug where the podman wait command would sometimes error when waiting for a container set to auto-remove.
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet .kube units would not report an error (and stay running) even when a pod failed to start (#20667).

API

• Fixed a bug where the Compat DF endpoint did not correctly report total size of all images.

Misc

• Updated Buildah to v1.39.2
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.62.1
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.34.1

v5.4.0

Features

• A preview of Podman's support for OCI artifacts has been added through the podman artifact suite of commands, including add, inspect, ls, pull, push, and rm. This support is very early and not fully complete, and the command line interface for these tools has not been finalized. We welcome feedback on the new artifact experience through our issue tracker!
• The podman update command now supports a wide variety of options related to healthchecks (including --health-cmd to define a new healthcheck and --no-healthcheck to disable an existing healthcheck), allowing healthchecks to be added to, removed from, and otherwise updated on existing containers. You can find full details on the 15 added options in the manpage.
• The --mount type=volume option for the podman run, podman create, and podman volume create commands now supports a new option, subpath=, to make only a subset of the volume visible in the container (#20661).
• The --userns=keep-id option for the podman run, podman create, and podman pod create commands now supports a new option, --userns=keep-id:size=, to configure the size of the user namespace (#24387).
• The podman kube play command now supports Container Device Interface (CDI) devices (#17833).
• The podman machine init command now supports a new option, --playbook, to run an Ansible playbook in the created VM on first boot for initial configuration.
• Quadlet .pod files now support a new field, ShmSize, to specify the size of the pod's shared SHM (#22915).
• The podman run, podman create, and podman pod create commands now support a new option, --hosts-file, to define the base file used for /etc/hosts in the container.
• The podman run, podman create, and podman pod create commands now support a new option, --no-hostname, which disables the creation of /etc/hostname in the container (#25002).
• The podman network create command now supports a new option for bridge networks, --opt mode=unmanaged, which allows Podman to use an existing network bridge on the system without changes.
• The --network option to podman run, podman create, and podman pod create now accepts a new option for bridge networks, host_interface_name, which specifies a name for the network interface created outside the container.
• The podman manifest rm command now supports a new option, --ignore, to not error when removing manifests that do not exist.
• The podman system prune command now supports a new option, --build, to remove build containers leftover from prematurely terminated builds.
• The podman events command now generates events for the creation and removal of networks (#24032).

Breaking Changes

• Due to a lack of availability of hardware to test on, the Podman maintainers are no longer capable of providing full support for Podman on Intel Macs. Binaries and machine images will still be produced, and pull requests related to MacOS on Intel systems will still be merged, but bugs will be fixed on a best effort basis only. We welcome any potential new maintainers who would be able to assist in restoring full support.
• Quadlet previously incorrectly allowed : as a character to define comments. This was a mistake; developer intent and documentation was that # and ; were to be used as comment characters instead, matching systemd. This has been corrected, and semicolons now define comments instead of colons.

Changes

• Podman now passes container hostnames to Netavark, which will use them for any DHCP requests for the container.
• Partial pulls of zstd:chunked images now only happen for images that have a RootFS.DiffID entry in the image's OCI config JSON, and require the layer contents to match. This resolves issues with image ID ambiguity when partial pulls were enabled.
• Packagers can now set the BUILD_ORIGIN environment variable when building podman from the Makefile. This provides information on who built the Podman binary, and is displayed in podman version and podman info. This will help upstream bug reports, allowing maintainers to trace how and where the binary was built and installed from.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs on WSL could fail to start when using usermode networking could fail to start due to a port conflict (#20327).
• Fixed a bug where overlay mounts could not be made at paths where the image specifies a volume (#24555).
• Fixed a bug where the podman build command did not honor the no_pivot_root setting from containers.conf (#24546).
• Fixed a bug where volumes would have the wrong permissions if podman cp was used to copy into a fresh volume in a container that had never been started.
• Fixed a bug where using podman cp to copy into a named volume requiring a mount (image volumes, volumes backed by a volume plugin, or other volumes with options) would fail when the container being copied into was stopped.
• Fixed a bug where rlimits would be set incorrectly when Podman was run as root but without CAP_SYS_RESOURCE (#24692).
• Fixed a bug where the podman stats --all command would fail if a container started with --cgroups=none was present (#24632).
• Fixed a bug where the podman info command would only return details on one image store even if additional image stores were configured in storage.conf.
• Fixed a bug where the podman update command could reset resource limits that were not being modified to default (#24610).
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman update command could not update resource limits on devices mounted into the container (#24734).
• Fixed a bug where the podman manifest annotate command could panic when the --index option was used (#24750).
• Fixed a bug where a Quadlet container reusing another container's network could cause errors if the second container was not already running.
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet files containing lines with a trailing backslash could cause an infinite loop during parsing (#24810).
• Fixed a bug where Quadlet would, when run as a non-root user, not generate for files in subfolders of /etc/containers/systemd/users/ (#24783).
• Fixed a bug where values in Quadlet files containing octal escape sequences were incorrectly unescaped.
• Fixed a bug where podman generate kube could generate persistent volumes with mixed-case names or names containing an underscore, which are not supported by Kubernetes (#16542).
• Fixed a bug where the ptmxmode option to --mount type=devpts did not function.
• Fixed a bug where shell completion on Windows would include .exe in the executable name, breaking completion on some shells.
• Fixed a bug where the output of podman inspect on containers did not include the ID of the network the container was joined to, improving Docker compatibility (#24910).
• Fixed a bug where containers created with the remote API incorrectly included a create command (#25026).
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to specify the libkrun backend for VMs on Intel Macs (libkrun only supports Arm systems).
• Fixed a bug where libkrun and applehv VMs from podman machine could be started at the same time on Macs (#25112).
• Fixed a bug where podman exec commands could not detach from the exec session using the detach keys (#24895).
• Fixed a bug where Podman would fail to start due to a database configuration mismatch when certain fields were configured to the empty string (#24738).

API

• The Compat and Libpod Build APIs for Images now support a new query parameter, nohosts, which (when set to true) does not create /etc/hosts in the image when building.
• Fixed a bug where the Compat Create API for Containers did not honor CDI devices, preventing (among other things) the use of GPUs with docker compose (#19338).

Misc

• The Docker alias script has been fixed to better handle variable substitution.
• Fixed a bug where podman-restart.service functioned incorrectly when no containers were present.
• Updated Buildah to v1.39.0
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.62.0
• Updated the containers/storage library to v1.57.1
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.34.0