Any time I always read how to accomplish something in podman-land , the action takes like 5 extra steps compared to docker, is probably an experimental feature that’s not supported and is always from a non-official source or some random blog.
In my limited experience, when Podman seems more complicated than Docker, it’s because the Docker daemon runs as root and can by default do stuff Podman can’t without explicitly giving it permission to do so.
99% of the stuff self-hosters run on regular rootful Docker can run with no issues using rootless Podman.
Rootless Docker is an option, but my understanding is most people don’t bother with it. Whereas with Podman it’s the default.
Docker is good, Podman is good. It’s like comparing distros, different tools for roughly the same job.
Pods are a really powerful feature though.
In my limited experience, when Podman seems more complicated than Docker, it’s because the Docker daemon runs as root and can by default do stuff Podman can’t without explicitly giving it permission to do so.
Can’t argue with that. There’s some truth to this.
99% of the stuff self-hosters run on regular rootful Docker can run with no issues using rootless Podman.
If this figure was even close to being remotely true, everyone would have moved to rootless containers by now.
Rootless Docker is an option, but my understanding is most people don’t bother with it. Whereas with Podman it’s the default.
These two share the same set of problems. People don’t want to downgrade from a “working” docker to a rootless “safer” docker that comes with more usability headaches.
Docker is good, Podman is good. It’s like comparing distros, different tools for roughly the same job.
Not really. The two are really different underneath but on surface they may look like they are overlapping solutions to the untrained eye.
Pods are a really powerful feature though.
Last time I was giving podman a try, I didn’t find anything really special about pods. Maybe it just didn’t click for me or I was not the intended audience.
on surface they may look like they are overlapping solutions to the untrained eye.
You’ll need to elaborate on this, since AFAIK Podman is literally meant as a replacement for Docker. My untrained eye can’t see what your trained eye can see under the surface.
The two are not hot-swappable solutions (as much as podman tries to act as a drop-in replacement for docker). Trying to replace one with the other after coming from extended use of either will immediately let you know of the stark differences between them.
Perhaps I misunderstand the words “overlapping” and “hot-swappable” in this case, I’m not a native english speaker. To my knowledge they’re not the same thing.
In my opinion wanting to run an extra service as root to be able to e.g. serve a webapp on an unprivileged port is just strange. But I’ve been using Podman for quite some time. Using Docker after Podman is a real pain, I’ll give you that.
I am not a native english speaker either but it seems like you are trying to understand those two words outside of their context as used in the sentences I’ve replied. They are only meant to be understood in the context of the conversation. In this case, the two terms mean almost interchangable. Look up the meaning of both words and try to apply them as previously used.
In my opinion wanting to run an extra service as root to be able to e.g. serve a webapp on an unprivileged port is just strange.
Often times we don’t get to choose the software solutions that we will eventually use, they choose us. Colloquially speaking.
If you make something with Podman yourself it is actually less work most of the time (the OP tutorial is incredibly convoluted for no reason).
But sure, if someone else did all the work for you and you just need to download the docker-compose file and run it, that is of course less work for you. But that is just a result of Docker’s relative popularity compared to Podman.
If you make something with Podman yourself it is actually less work most of the time (the OP tutorial is incredibly convoluted for no reason).
Doubt.
OP’s guide is simply describing how podman is designed to work. With systemd unit files for managing services.
But sure, if someone else did all the work for you and you just need to download the docker-compose file and run it, that is of course less work for you. But that is just a result of Docker’s relative popularity compared to Podman.
Why re-invent the wheel?
I use podman because it’s more secure. I’m willing to put in the extra effort so that all my services aren’t running as root. If it turns out a vulnerability is discovered in lemmy tomorrow that allows people to access my server through my lemmy container, the attacker will only have access to a dummy account that hosts my containers. Yes, they could stop all my containers, but they can’t delete the volumes or any other data on my server.
Podman might have a “more secure” design but you can run the docker daemon as rootless. Podman itself is not immune to vulnerabilities and will not solve all your security problems.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Security is not all or nothing. Reducing the attack surface is still important.
Can you elaborate on running docker daemon as rootless? It’s my understanding that you can add your account to a group to access the docker daemon rootless, but the containers are still running as root, as the daemon itself raises the access to root.
but the containers are still running as root, as the daemon itself raises the access to root.
No. The daemon can run without root, as such the containers don’t have root. My docker install doesn’t have root access. None of my stacks / containers need any root access tbh. I don’t have any troubles with deplyong stuff.
Not sure relying on podman alone as a security tool might be advisable. Podman is a container technology first, security is not the main goal.
Read more about rootless docker here.
I never said I was relying on it alone. Not sure why you think that.
That’s a great link. Thank you for sharing. It’s good that docker supports this functionality now.
I never said I was relying on it alone. Not sure why you think that.
…
…all my services aren’t running as root.
If it turns out a vulnerability is discovered in lemmy tomorrow that allows people to access my server through my lemmy container, the attacker will only have access to a dummy account that hosts my containers.
This was your argument according to you for why you think podman is more secure (than docker I presume). Seemed to imply rootless podman will save you from an attacker. I was simply disproving the flawed notion.
I think you’re interpreting too much. Security is about layers and making it harder for attackers, and that’s exactly what using a non-root user does.
In that scenario, the attacker needs to find and exploit another vulnerability to gain root access, which takes time - time which the attacker might not be willing to spend and time which you can use to respond.
Oh, well that’s simple…
Dependencies within unrelated projects (ie, sharing a single database container for a few unrelated apps) is something that would be pretty handy, and is missing from compose.
Auto-updates are cool - but also dangerous… I think there’s something in running watchtower manually like I have been - when something breaks straight after, I know the cause.
Couldn’t you just create a compose file for a database separately?
Interesting. But what If I’m not using CoreOS? Also RedHat fucked up by using YAML for configuration.
what if I’m not using CoreOS?
Podman runs on any distro (or more strictly: any distro that uses systemd). It’s essentially a FOSS alternative to Docker.
…except I can run Docker anywhere. It’s not tied to systemd. These quadlets seem like a very systemd-specific thing. Which is great if you’re building everything around systemd but it’s a niche.
systemd [is] a niche
Maybe in the wider world of all the operating systems installed on all the computers, but for Linux-based computing it is, like it or not, near ubiquitous these days. And in particular for server systems (and this is, after all, /m/selfhosted), good luck finding something that isn’t systemd-based unless you’re deliberately choosing a BSD or aiming for a system which has ever-decreasing amounts of support available.
Honestly, this is kinda making me wanna redeploy a couple app stacks I have on a VPS. Hmm.
I don’t trust anything related to red hat
Genuine question here: why?
It’s just morally rough that they basically said they don’t get anything of benefit from contributing to open source despite really owing their start to it
Have you seen how they have behaved recentl?
You mean showing a commitment to open-source and keeping all of their software open-source (when most other “open-source” companies in similar situations switched to non-Free licenses, like Elasticsearch for example)?
