podman

Ansible role for podman

Manage services and containers with podman

Usage

By default this role will simply install podman as described in the podman docs and perform any other required setup to make the installation functional on the supported platforms.

Important Note: This means that for Ubuntu / Debian systems it will perform an apt upgrade as per the docs after the repository is added. This upgrade will only be run if the repository is added or changed and will not execute on subsequent runs.

Additionally, it can deploy and configure podman containers as SystemD services.

Example Playbook

- hosts: all
  roles:
    - role: podman

Automatic Service Deployment

Podman containers meant to run as services are relatively homogeneous. For this reason this role provides a variable which can be used to deploy and configure containers as SystemD services. More complex use cases like configure multiple containers as a pod are not yet supported. To use this feature for your host define a variable podman_services which is a list of maps that have the following structure:

podman_services:
    ## Podman Variables
    #
    # Required: The image name to download
  - image_name: nginx
    # Optional: The tag to download. This often corresponds to
    # version, defaults to 'latest'
    image_tag: mainline
    # Optional: Description that will be added to the SystemD service file
    description: Web host
    # Optional: List of ports to publish. Takes the same form as the
    # podman CLI that is to say: host-port:container-port. This is
    # just piped directly to the '--publish' flag so binding IPs work
    # as well (ex. '127.0.0.1:8080:80'). Defaults to none.
    publish:
      - '80:80'
    # Optional: String name of the network to be passed as the --network flag.
    # If the network does not exist it will be created. This can be used to allow
    # multiple services to network with each other. See Networking for caveats
    network: somenetwork
    # Optional: List of volumes to mount. Takes the same form as the
    # podman CLI host-directory:container-directory and as shown below
    # mount options are allowed.
    volumes:
      - '/tmp:/usr/share/nginx/html:ro'
    # Optional: Define a hostname for podman's hostname flag. Set's
    # the containers hostname, default is none.
    hostname: chasinglogic.io
    # Optional: A list of secrets to mount. Secrets will not be created
    # automatically. The only required field if used is name. The other
    # values have defaults as specified in podman documentation
    # https://docs.podman.io/en/v4.6.0/markdown/options/secret.html
    secrets:
      - name: secret
        type: mount
        target: /run/secrets/secret
        uid: 0
        gid: 0
        mode: 0
    # Optional: A list of environment variables to add to the
    # container.  Default is none.
    env_vars:
      - SOME_VAR=SOME_VALUE
    # Optional: A list of arbitrary arguments as strings which will be added before the image name.
    flags:
      - '--cap-add=NET_ADMIN'

    ## SystemD Variables
    #
    # Optional: Define the restart policy for this service. Default is always
    restart: always
    # Optional: Define the time to wait between restarts of this service in seconds. Default is 30
    restart_sec: 30
    # Optional: Define the actual name used for the SystemD
    # service. {{ Defaults to image_name + '-podman' }}
    service_name: nginx
    # Optional: Define the targets / services this SystemD service
    # must start after. This is a YAML list not a string.
    after:
      - network.target
    # Optional: Define the timeout for starting this SystemD
    # service. For valid values see 'man systemd.service'. Defaults to
    # 5 minutes.
    timeout_start_sec: 5m
    # Optional: Define an install section for the SystemD
    # service. Currently only wanted_by is supported. See 'man
    # systemd.unit' for a description of this section. Default is none
    # and most users should not need this.
    install:
      wanted_by:
        - multi-user.target
    # Optional: define the user and group for the service
    # file. Default is omission which is equivalent to root on most
    # systems.
    user: root
    group: root

Networking

At this time Ansible does not provide a podman networking module analogous to docker_network. If you are using the network option on your container you'll need to ensure the network exists before this role runs. In the future when podman networking support is added to Ansible this role will ensure it's created.