Everyone works with Linux or Mac in every development project nowadays. And with that way, Podman on these systems might be easy to get started and we only keep focusing on what can we deliver.
But the question is if you have to work with a Windows environment and WSL2 underline, then what can we do if we still want to use Podman (replace for Docker) on that box?
I have read a lot of articles to bring up the Podman to Windows + WSL2 but to be honest, we have to handle a lot of exceptional cases. It might work or might not, and I don't really sure.
So that I write down some tips and tricks to get it to work on my Windows 11 + WSL2 (Ubuntu 20) so that everyone else can have a reference to set up the containerized environment to develop the container driven application.
Get starting with 4 simple steps that I have to run on every daily basis to have Podman run with me first. Subsequently, we will deep dive into how can we install the package and works to Podman on Windows
Step 1: Start the Podman machine
Let's run your Ubuntu box (WSL2) and type
> podman machine start
You will get an error like
INFO[0000] waiting for clients...
INFO[0000] listening tcp://0.0.0.0:7777
INFO[0000] new connection from @ to /mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/podman/qemu_podman-machine-default.sock
Waiting for VM ...
Could not access KVM kernel module: Permission denied
qemu-system-x86_64: failed to initialize KVM: Permission denied
Error: dial unix /mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/podman/podman-machine-default_ready.sock: connect: connection refused
ERRO[0003] cannot receive packets from @, disconnecting: cannot read size from socket: EOF
Okay, after searching around Google, I have found the solution to make it work
> sudo chmod 666 /dev/kvm
Then, run the command above again
> podman machine start
It should work, and you should see the message as follows
INFO[0000] waiting for clients...
INFO[0000] listening tcp://0.0.0.0:7777
INFO[0000] new connection from @ to /mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/podman/qemu_podman-machine-default.sock
Waiting for VM ...
Machine "podman-machine-default" started successfully
Step 2: Start ssh service on Ubuntu
Type the command
$ sudo service ssh start
You should see
* Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server sshd
Step 3: Podman to bind the Unix socket so that the remote client can connect to
Run the command below
> podman system service --time=0 unix:///mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/podman/podman.sock
Step 4: Connect to Podman by using Podman remote client from Windows 11
> podman system connection add wsl --identity C:\Users\<your username>\.ssh\id_rsa_localhost ssh://<your username>@localhost/mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/podman/podman.sock
Then
> podman images
You should see
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
docker.io/library/postgres 11 798225d02ad1 4 weeks ago 290 MB
docker.io/library/postgres 12 afee8d9d57fc 4 weeks ago 379 MB
mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk 6.0 e86d68dca8c7 4 weeks ago 725 MB
mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/sdk 3.1 e192c0c19af6 4 weeks ago 723 MB
docker.io/library/rabbitmq 3.8-management-alpine a2fdbd753a1f 5 weeks ago 178 MB
docker.io/library/golang 1.17.3-buster 08f6df476f80 6 weeks ago 906 MB
docker.io/openpolicyagent/opa 0.35.0 4a700ccbe0c6 7 weeks ago 72.9 MB
docker.io/library/postgres 11-alpine 4566dfb4cdeb 7 weeks ago 205 MB
docker.io/library/postgres 12-alpine 7c35a1e9b20d 7 weeks ago 207 MB
docker.io/library/hello-world latest feb5d9fea6a5 3 months ago 19.9 kB
docker.io/library/redis 6.2.5-alpine f6f2296798e9 4 months ago 33.5 MB
docker.io/openzipkin/zipkin 2.22.1 ecad87b22fa0 14 months ago 148 MB
docker.io/mailhog/mailhog v1.0.1 4de68494cd0d 17 months ago 401 MB
That is what I have to do every do day when I want to get started in the Podman development environment.
Setup Podman on Ubuntu 20 (WSL2) step by step
Preparation your WSL2 with Ubuntu 20
> wsl # make sure you have WSL2 run on your machine
If you don't have WSL2 on your machine, please go to docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install
Then you can run
> wsl --list
You should see
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu-20.04 (Default)
docker-desktop
docker-desktop-data
If you don't have Ubuntu-20.04, then you can have it by following the guidance at omgubuntu.co.uk/how-to-install-wsl2-on-wind..
That's cool. You are ready for this journey!
Jump into Ubuntu box and prepare Podman stuff
> export NAME=xUbuntu
> export VERSION_ID=20.04
> export WINDOWS_HOME=/mnt/c/Users/<yourUserNameHere>
The follow up with the guidance from Podman site to install it into Ubuntu
$ apt update
$ sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/kubic:/libcontainers:/stable/${NAME}_${VERSION_ID}/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/devel:kubic:libcontainers:stable.list"
> wget -nv https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:kubic:libcontainers:stable/${NAME}_${VERSION_ID}/Release.key -O Release.key
$ sudo apt-key add - < Release.key
$ sudo apt-get update -qq
$ sudo apt-get -qq -y install podman
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/containers
> echo -e "[registries.search]\nregistries = ['docker.io', 'quay.io']" | sudo tee /etc/containers/registries.conf
Run > podman info, you should see Podman server information.
Prepare a user and group for Podman on Ubuntu
$ sudo groupadd podman -g 2000
$ sudo useradd podman -u 2000 -g 2000
# add your user to podman group
$ sudo usermod -a -G podman $USER
Install OpenSSH on WSL and generate keys
$ sudo apt-get -qq -y install openssh-server
$ sudo service ssh start
Then, we can generate the keys as follows
> export WINDOWS_HOME=/mnt/c/Users/<you windows username>/
> ssh-keygen -b 2048 -t rsa -f $WINDOWS_HOME/.ssh/id_rsa_localhost -q -N ""
> mkdir ~/.ssh
> cat $WINDOWS_HOME/.ssh/id_rsa_localhost.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Sometimes, you have got the error message sshd: no hostkeys available -- exiting, please follow the guidance at garron.me/en/linux/sshd-no-hostkeys-availab.. to solve it.
Install quemu and gvproxy
> apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients bridge-utils
When you start Podman, and you have got the error
Error: unable to start host networking: "could not find \"gvproxy\" in one of [/usr/local/opt/podman/libexec /opt/homebrew/bin /opt/homebrew/opt/podman/libexec /usr/local/bin /usr/local/libexec/podman /usr/local/lib/podman /usr/libexec/podman /usr/lib/podman]"
Then, you have to install gvproxy on your machine. Download it at gvproxy, then extract and put it into /usr/local/libexec/podman. Next step, you open up ~/.config/containers/containers.conf, and add
helper_binaries_dir = ["/usr/local/libexec/podman"]
Run the > podman machine start again, and you should be able to start this machine.
After finishing these setups, then every time we boost up the WSL2 with Ubuntu 20 distro, we can just follow 4 simple steps in this article to get starting your environment. Happy hacking!
Notes: We have several discussions about how to get Podman works on Windows + WSL2 (Ubuntu 20 distro) at:
- github.com/containers/podman/pull/12503
- github.com/containers/podman/issues/12056
- github.com/dotnet/tye/issues/1255
Other References: