Ubuntu Manpage: podman-machine-init - Initialize a new virtual machine

Provided by: podman_5.0.3+ds1-5ubuntu1_amd64

NAME

       podman-machine-init - Initialize a new virtual machine

SYNOPSIS

       podman machine init [options] [name]

DESCRIPTION

Initialize a new virtual machine for Podman.

The default machine name is podman-machine-default. If a machine name is not specified as
an argument, then the new machine will be named podman-machine-default.

Rootless only.

Podman on MacOS and Windows requires a virtual machine. This is because containers are
Linux - containers do not run on any other OS because containers' core functionality are
tied to the Linux kernel. Podman machine must be used to manage MacOS and Windows
machines, but can be optionally used on Linux.

podman machine init initializes a new Linux virtual machine where containers are run. SSH
keys are automatically generated to access the VM, and system connections to the root
account and a user account inside the VM are added.

By default, the VM distribution is Fedora CoreOS except for WSL which is based on a custom
Fedora image. While Fedora CoreOS upgrades come out every 14 days, the automatic update
mechanism Zincata is disabled by Podman machine.

To check if there is an upgrade available for your machine os, you can run the following
command:

$ podman machine ssh 'sudo rpm-ostree upgrade --check'

If an update is available, you can rerun the above command and remove the --check and your
operating system will be updated. After updating, you must stop and start your machine
with podman machine stop && podman machine start for it to take effect.

Note: Updating as described above can result in version mismatches between Podman on the
host and Podman in the machine. Executing podman info should reveal versions of both. A
configuration where the Podman host and machine mismatch are unsupported.

For more information on updates and advanced configuration, see the Fedora CoreOS
documentation about auto-updates and update strategies.

Fedora CoreOS upgrades come out every 14 days and are detected and installed
automatically. The VM is rebooted during the upgrade. For more information on updates and
advanced configuration, see the Fedora CoreOS documentation about auto-updates and update
strategies.

OPTIONS

--cpus=number
Number of CPUs.

--disk-size=number
Size of the disk for the guest VM in GiB.

--help
Print usage statement.

--ignition-path
Fully qualified path of the ignition file.

If an ignition file is provided, the file is copied into the user's CONF_DIR and renamed.
Additionally, no SSH keys are generated, nor are any system connections made. It is
assumed that the user does these things manually or handled otherwise.

--image
Fully qualified registry, path, or URL to a VM image. Registry target must be in the form
of docker://registry/repo/image:version.

--memory, -m=number
Memory (in MiB). Note: 1024MiB = 1GiB.

--now
Start the virtual machine immediately after it has been initialized.

--rootful
Whether this machine prefers rootful (true) or rootless (false) container execution. This
option determines the remote connection default if there is no existing remote connection
configurations.

API forwarding, if available, follows this setting.

--timezone
Set the timezone for the machine and containers. Valid values are local or a timezone
such as America/Chicago. A value of local, which is the default, means to use the
timezone of the machine host.

The timezone setting is not used with WSL. WSL automatically sets the timezone to the
same as the host Windows operating system.

--usb=bus=number,devnum=number or vendor=hexadecimal,product=hexadecimal
Assign a USB device from the host to the VM via USB passthrough. Only supported for QEMU
Machines.

The device needs to have proper permissions in order to be passed to the machine. This
means the device needs to be under your user group.

Note that using bus and device number are simpler but the values can change every boot or
when the device is unplugged.

When specifying a USB using vendor and product ID's, if more than one device has the same
vendor and product ID, the first available device is assigned.

--user-mode-networking
Indicates that this machine relays traffic from the guest through a user-space process
running on the host. In some VPN configurations the VPN may drop traffic from alternate
network interfaces, including VM network devices. By enabling user-mode networking (a
setting of true), VPNs observe all podman machine traffic as coming from the host,
bypassing the problem.

When the qemu backend is used (Linux, Mac), user-mode networking is mandatory and the only
allowed value is true. In contrast, The Windows/WSL backend defaults to false, and follows
the standard WSL network setup. Changing this setting to true on Windows/WSL informs
Podman to replace the WSL networking setup on start of this machine instance with a user-
mode networking distribution. Since WSL shares the same kernel across distributions, all
other running distributions reuses this network. Likewise, when the last machine instance
with a true setting stops, the original networking setup is restored.

--username
Username to use for executing commands in remote VM. Default value is core for FCOS and
user for Fedora (default on Windows hosts). Should match the one used inside the resulting
VM image.

--volume, -v=source:target[:options]
Mounts a volume from source to target.

Create a mount. If /host-dir:/machine-dir is specified as the *source:target*, Podman
mounts host-dir in the host to machine-dir in the Podman machine.

Additional options may be specified as a comma-separated string. Recognized options are: *
ro: mount volume read-only * rw: mount volume read/write (default) *
security_model=[model]: specify 9p security model (see below)

The 9p security model [determines]
https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/9psetup#Starting_the_Guest_directly if and how the 9p
filesystem translates some filesystem operations before actual storage on the host.

In order to allow symlinks to work, on MacOS the default security model is
none.

The value of mapped-xattr specifies that 9p store symlinks and some file attributes as
extended attributes on the host. This is suitable when the host and the guest do not need
to interoperate on the shared filesystem, but has caveats for actual shared access;
notably, symlinks on the host are not usable on the guest and vice versa. If
interoperability is required, then choose none instead, but keep in mind that the guest is
not able to do things that the user running the virtual machine cannot do, e.g. create
files owned by another user. Using none is almost certainly the best choice for read-only
volumes.

Example: -v "$HOME/git:$HOME/git:ro,security_model=none"

Default volume mounts are defined in containers.conf. Unless changed, the default values
is $HOME:$HOME.

--volume-driver
Driver to use for mounting volumes from the host, such as virtfs.

EXAMPLES

       Initialize the default Podman machine, pulling the content from the internet.

       $ podman machine init

       Initialize a Podman machine for the specified name pulling the content from the internet.

       $ podman machine init myvm

       Initialize  the default Podman machine pulling the content from the internet defaulting to
       rootful mode. The default is rootless.

       $ podman machine init --rootful

       Initialize the default Podman machine overriding  its  disk  size  override,  pulling  the
       content from the internet.

       $ podman machine init --disk-size 50

       Initialize  the  specified  Podman machine overriding its memory size, pulling the content
       from the internet.

       $ podman machine init --memory=1024 myvm

       Initialize the default Podman machine with the host directory /Users mounted into  the  VM
       at /mnt/Users.

       $ podman machine init -v /Users:/mnt/Users

       Initialize  the  default  Podman  machine  with  a  usb  device passthrough specified with
       options. Only supported for QEMU Machines.

       $ podman machine init --usb vendor=13d3,product=5406

       Initialize the default Podman machine with a usb device passthrough  with  specified  with
       options. Only supported for QEMU Machines.

       $ podman machine init --usb bus=1,devnum=3

HISTORY