containers/podman v5.6.0 Release Notes

Published at: 2025-08-15T15:50:25Z

Features

A new set of commands for managing Quadlets has been added as podman quadlet install (install a new Quadlet for the current user), podman quadlet list (list installed Quadlets), podman quadlet print (print the contents of a Quadlet file), and podman quadlet rm (remove a Quadlet). These commands are presently not available with the remote Podman client - we expect support for this to arrive in a future release.
Quadlet .container units can now specify environment variables without values in the Environment= key, retrieving the value from the host when the container is started (#26247).
Quadlet .pod units now support two new keys, Label= (to set labels on the created pod) and ExitPolicy= (to set exit policy for the created pod) (#25961 and #25596).
Quadlet .image units now support a new key, Policy=, to set pull policy for the image (e.g. pull always, pull only if newer version available) (#26446).
Quadlet .network units now support a new key, InterfaceName=, to specify the name of the network interface created.
The podman machine init command now supports a new option, --swap, enabling swap in the created virtual machine and setting it to a given size (in megabytes) (#15980).
The --mount option to podman create and podman run now supports dest= as a valid alias for destination=.
The podman kube play command can now restrict container execution to specific CPU cores and specific memory nodes using the io.podman.annotations.cpuset/$ctrname and io.podman.annotations.memory-nodes/$ctrname annotations (#26172).
The podman kube play command now supports the lifecycle.stopSignal field in Pod YAML, allowing the signal used to stop containers to be specified (#25389).
The podman artifact suite of commands for interacting with OCI artifacts is now available in the remote Podman client and the bindings for the REST API.
The podman volume import and podman volume export commands are now available in the remote Podman client (#26049).
The --build-context option to podman build is now supported by the remote Podman client (#23433).
The podman volume create command now accepts two new options, --uid and --gid, to set the UID and GID the volume will be created with.
The podman secret create command now has a new option, --ignore, causing the command to succeed even if a secret with the given name already exists.
The podman pull command now has a new option, --policy, to configure pull policy.
The --mount type=artifact option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now allows the filename of the artifact in the container to be set using the name= option (e.g. podman run --mount type=artifact,name=$NAME,...).
The --tmpfs option to podman create and podman run now allows a new option, noatime, to be passed (e.g. podman run --tmpfs /run:noatime ...) (#26102).
The podman update command now has a new option, --latest, to update the latest container instead of specifying a specific container (#26380).
A new command, podman buildx inspect, has been added to improve Docker compatibility (#13014).

Breaking Changes

Rosetta support in podman machine VMs has been disabled by default due to issues with newer Linux kernels. These issues have been addressed in the Tahoe beta, and we plan on re-enabling support for Rosetta in a future Podman release once the fix is in wider circulation. You can find more details here.

Changes

In preparation for a planned removal of the BoltDB database in Podman 6.0, a warning has been added for installations still using BoltDB. These warnings are presently not visible by default, which will happen in Podman 5.7.
The podman artifact suite of commands for interacting with OCI artifacts is now considered stable.
For users running podman machine VMs using the libkrun provider on an M3 or newer host running macOS 15+, nested virtualization is enabled by default.
When creating podman machine VMs on Windows using the WSL v2 provider, images are now pulled as artifacts from quay.io/podman/machine-os, matching the behavior of other VM providers.
Signal forwarding done by the --sig-proxy option to podman run and podman attach is now more robust to races and no longer forwards the SIGSTOP signal.
The podman system check --quick command now skips checking layer digests.
Podman on Windows using the WSLv2 provider now prefers the WSL executable in C:\Program Files\Windows Subsystem for Linux\wsl.exe over the one in WindowsApps, avoiding common “access denied” issues (#25787).
The --mount type=artifact option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create now mounts artifacts containing a only a single blob as a file at the given destination path if the path does not exist in the image.
The podman volume export command now refuses to export to STDOUT if it is a TTY (#26506).
When generating Quadlet units with options known to be problematic when used with Podman, such as User=, Group=, and DynamicUser= in the [Service] section of a unit, Quadlet will now warn the user of the potential incompatibility (#26543).

Bugfixes

Fixed a bug where the --security-opt unmask= option to podman create and podman run did not allow comma-separated lists of paths to be passed, instead only allowing a single path.
Fixed a bug where stopping a Podman container could unintentionally kill non-Podman processes if the PID of an exec session started inside the container was reused for a new process while the container was running (#25104).
Fixed a bug where podman machine init could fail if run in a Podman container (#25950).
Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs would sometimes receive incorrect timezone information.
Fixed a bug where podman machine VMs created with a custom username would not have lingering enabled.
Fixed a bug where the podman machine init command on Windows when using the WSL 2 provider did not reliably determine if WSL was installed (#25523).
Fixed a bug where the name of Quadlet .pod units that did not specify the PodName= key was set incorrectly (#26062).
Fixed a bug where Quadlet .container units joining a pod specified in a .pod unit would fail as the pod name was set incorrectly when creating the container (#26105).
Fixed a bug where Quadlet would not generate RequiresMountsFor when mounting a .volume unit with Type=bind set into a container (#26125).
Fixed a bug where Quadlet dropin files were not correctly overwritten by new dropin files with the same name further along the hierarchy if the two dropin files did not share a parent directory (#26555).
Fixed a bug where Quadlet would sometimes not print warnings when failing to parse units (#26542).
Fixed a bug where Quadlet .pod files did not include the last Environment= key in the [Service] section in the generated systemd service (#26521).
Fixed a bug where starting a container with already-running dependencies would fail.
Fixed a bug where OCI hooks in a directory specified with --hooks-dir would fail to run when containers were restarted (#17935).
Fixed a bug where the --mount option to podman create and podman run required the type= option to be specified, instead of defaulting to volume when it was not present (#26101).
Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would fail on Windows when specifying an absolute path to YAML files (#26350).
Fixed a bug where the --security-opt seccomp= option to podman create, podman run, and podman pod create could error on Windows when given a path to a Seccomp profile (#26558).
Fixed a bug where the --blkio-weight-device, --device-read-bps, --device-write-bps, --device-read-iops, and --device-write-iops options to podman create and podman run incorrectly accepted non-block devices.
Fixed a bug where the podman build command handled the --ignorefile option differently from the buildah bud command (#25746).
Fixed a bug where the podman rm -f command could return an error when trying to remove a running container whose conmon process had been killed (#26640).
Fixed a bug where the podman inspect command did not correctly display log size for containers when log_size_max was set in containers.conf.

API

A full set of API endpoints for interacting with artifacts has been added, including inspecting artifacts (GET /libpod/artifacts/{name}/json), listing all artifacts (GET /libpod/artifacts/json), pulling an artifact (POST /libpod/artifacts/pull), removing an artifact (DELETE /libpod/artifacts/{name}), adding an artifact (or appending to an existing artifact) from a tar file in the request body (POST /libpod/artifacts/add), pushing an artifact to a registry (/libpod/artifacts/{name}/push), and retrieving the contents of an artifact (GET /libpod/artifacts/{name}/extract).
The Compat Create endpoint for Containers now accepts a new parameter, HostConfig.CgroupnsMode, to specify the cgroup namespace mode of the created container.
The Compat Create endpoint for Containers now respects the base_hosts_file option in containers.conf.
The Compat System Info endpoint now returns a new field, DefaultAddressPools.
The Compat System DF endpoint has removed the deprecated BuilderSize field.
The Compat Ping endpoint now sets Builder-Version to 1 to match Docker installs that do not include BuildKit.
The Compat List endpoint for Images now returns the shared-size field unconditionally, even if the shared-size query parameter was not set to true. If not requested through query parameter, it is set to -1. This improves Docker API compatibility.
The Compat Inspect endpoint for Images now no longer returns the deprecated VirtualSize field when Docker API version 1.44 and up is requested.
Fixed a bug where the Compat Delete API for Containers would remove running containers when the FORCE parameter was set to true; Docker only removes stopped containers (#25871).
Fixed a bug where the Compat List and Compat Inspect endpoints for Containers returned container status using Podman statuses instead of converting to Docker-compatible statuses (#17728).
Fixed a bug where healthchecks that exceeded their timeout were not properly terminated; they now receive SIGTERM, then SIGKILL after a delay, if their timeout is exceeded (#26086).
Fixed a bug where application/json responses would be HTML escaped, mutating some responses (e.g. <missing> becoming \u003cmissing\u003e in image history responses) (#17769).

Misc

Quadlet now no longer uses container/pod ID files when stopping containers, but instead passes the name of the container/pod directly to podman stop/podman pod stop.
When building Podman via Makefile, it will now attempt to dynamically link sqlite3 if the library and header are installed locally. This and other optimizations should result in a significant reduction in binary size relative to Podman 5.5.x. Packagers can use the libsqlite3 build tag to force this behavior when not using the Makefile to build.
Updated Buildah to v1.41.3
Updated the containers/common library to v0.64.1
Updated the containers/storage library to v1.59.1
Updated the containers/image library to v5.36.1

Podman V5.6.0 Rc2 Release Note Podman V5.6.1 Release Note