Podman cheatsheet

Images and containers

Command	Description
`podman pull nginx:alpine`	Pull image
`podman images`	List images
`podman run -d --name web -p 8080:80 nginx`	Run detached, publish port
`podman ps -a`	All containers
`podman logs -f web`	Follow logs
`podman exec -it web sh`	Shell in container
`podman stop web && podman rm web`	Stop and remove
`podman build -t myapp:1.0 .`	Build from Containerfile/Dockerfile

Info and inspect

Command	Description
`podman info`	Runtime, storage, rootless mode
`podman version`	Client and engine versions
`podman inspect web \| jq -r '.[0].State.Status'`	Container status
`podman inspect web \| jq -r '.[0].State.ExitCode'`	Exit code
`podman port web`	Published ports

Volumes and networks

Command	Description
`podman volume ls`	List volumes
`podman run -v ./data:/data:Z myapp`	Bind mount (SELinux :Z)
`podman network ls`	List networks
`podman network inspect podman`	Default network details

Pods

podman pod create --name mypod -p 8080:80
podman run -d --pod mypod --name c1 nginx
podman pod ps
podman pod stop mypod
podman pod rm mypod

Compose and kube

podman compose up -d
podman compose ps
podman compose down

podman play kube deployment.yaml
podman kube generate mycontainer > pod.yaml

systemd and Quadlet

podman generate systemd --name web --files --new
systemctl --user enable --now container-web.service

# Quadlet: /etc/containers/systemd/myapp.container
# systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl start myapp.service

Rootless and storage

Command	Description
`podman info \| grep -i rootless`	Rootless mode?
`cat /etc/subuid /etc/subgid`	UID/GID maps for rootless
`podman system df`	Disk usage
`podman system prune -a`	Remove unused data

Skopeo (images without running)

Command	Description
`skopeo inspect docker://nginx:alpine`	Remote image metadata
`skopeo copy docker://src dest`	Copy between registries/storage

Docker CLI alias

alias docker=podman   # many scripts work unchanged
podman --version

Pro tips

No daemon — podman ps works even when no "docker service" is running
Rootless: storage under ~/.local/share/containers/; use loginctl enable-linger for user services at boot
On RHEL/Fedora use :Z on volume mounts when SELinux denies access
podman machine runs a Linux VM on macOS/Windows (like Docker Desktop's VM)
Shared container basics: Docker lab

Practice scenarios

Hands-on Podman scenarios on live Linux VMs: podman