Red Hat did not just remove the Docker container engine from OpenShift. It also removed the Docker container engine, along with the docker command, from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 entirely. For RHEL 8, Docker is not included and not supported by Red Hat (although it is still available from other sources).

The removal of Docker reflects a change in Red Hat’s way of thinking about how containers are handled:

Although Docker is gone from RHEL 8, and OpenShift’s container engine is disconnected from single-node uses, people still want to use commands to work with containers and images manually. So Red Hat set about to create a set of tools to implement most of what the docker command does.

Tools like podman, skopeo, and buildah were developed to take over those docker command features. Each tool in this scenario can be more light-weight and focused on a subset of features. And with no need for a daemon process running to implement a container engine, these tools can run without the overhead of having to work with a daemon process.

If you feel that you still want to use Docker in RHEL 8, know that you can get Docker from different upstream projects, but that its use is unsupported in RHEL 8. Because so many docker command-line features have been implemented exactly in podman, you can set up an alias so that typing docker causes podman to run.

Installing the podman-docker package sets up such an alias. So every time you run a docker command line, it actually runs podman for you. More on this package later.

Red Hat provides container images and container-related software for the following computer architectures:

Although not all Red Hat images were supported across all architectures at first, nearly all are now available on all listed architectures. See Universal Base Images (UBI): Images, repositories, and packages for a list of supported images.

To get an environment where you can manipulate individual containers, you can install a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 system, then add a set of container tools to find, run, build and share containers. Here are examples of container-related tools you can install with RHEL 8:

Using the RHEL subscription model, if you want to create container images, you must properly register and entitle the host computer on which you build them. When you install packages, as part of the process of building a container, the build process automatically has access to entitlements available from the RHEL host. So it can get RPM packages from any repository enabled on that host.

Running the container tools such as podman, skopeo, or buildah as a user with superuser privilege (root user) is the best way to ensure that your containers have full access to any feature available on your system. However, with the feature called "Rootless Containers," generally available as of RHEL 8.1, you can work with containers as a regular user.

Although container engines, such as Docker, let you run docker commands as a regular (non-root) user, the docker daemon that carries out those requests runs as root. So, effectively, regular users can make requests through their containers that harm the system, without there being clarity about who made those requests. By setting up rootless container users, system administrators limit potentially damaging container activities from regular users, while still allowing those users to safely run many container features under their own accounts.

This section describes how to set up your system to use container tools (Podman, Skopeo, and Buildah) to work with containers as a non-root user (rootless). It also describes some of the limitations you will encounter because regular user accounts don’t have full access to all operating system features that their containers might need to run.

The podman search command lets you search selected container registries for images.

You can find the list of registries in the configuration file registries.conf:

[registries.search]
registries = ['registry.access.redhat.com', 'registry.redhat.io', 'docker.io']

[registries.insecure]
registries = []

[registries.block]
registries = []

As a root user, you can edit the /etc/containers/registries.conf file to change the default, system-wide search settings.

As a regular (rootless) user of podman, you can create your own registries.conf file in your home directory ($HOME/.config/containers/registries.conf) to override the system-wide settings.

Make sure that you follow the conditions when configuring container registries:

Some podman search command examples follow. The first example illustrates the unsuccessful search of all images from quay.io. The forwardslash at the end means to search the whole registry for all images accessible to you:

# podman search quay.io/
ERRO[0000] error searching registry "quay.io": couldn't search registry "quay.io":
unable to retrieve auth token: invalid username/password

To search quay.io registry, log in first:

# podman login quay.io
Username: johndoe
Password: ***********
Login Succeeded!
# podman search quay.io/
INDEX     NAME                                       DESCRIPTION   STARS   OFFICIAL   AUTOMATED
quay.io   quay.io/test/myquay                                      0
quay.io   quay.io/test/redistest                                   0
quay.io   quay.io/johndoe/websrv21                                 0
quay.io   quay.io/johndoe/mydbtest                                 0
quay.io   quay.io/johndoe/newbuild-10                              0

Search all available registries for postgresql images (resulting in more than 40 images found):

# podman search postgresql-10
INDEX       NAME                                            DESCRIPTION                    STARS OFFICIAL AUTOMATED
redhat.io   registry.redhat.io/rhel8/postgresql-10          This container image ...       0
redhat.io   registry.redhat.io/rhscl/postgresql-10-rhel7    PostgreSQL is an advanced ...  0
quay.io     quay.io/mettle/postgresql-database-provisioning
docker.io   docker.io/centos/postgresql-10-centos7          PostgreSQL is an advanced ... 13
...

To limit your search for postgresql to images from registry.redhat.io, type the following command. Notice that by entering the registry and the image name, any repository in the registry can be matched:

# podman search registry.redhat.io/postgresql-10
INDEX       NAME                                           DESCRIPTION           STARS   OFFICIAL   AUTOMATED
redhat.io   registry.redhat.io/rhel8/postgresql-10         This container image ...  0
redhat.io   registry.redhat.io/rhscl/postgresql-10-rhel7   PostgreSQL is an  ...     0

To get longer descriptions for each container image, add --no-trunc to the command:

# podman search --no-trunc registry.redhat.io/rhel8/postgresql-10
INDEX       NAME   DESCRIPTION              STARS   OFFICIAL   AUTOMATED
redhat.io   registry.redhat.io/rhel8/postgresql-10
                   This container image provides a containerized
                   packaging of the PostgreSQL postgres daemon and
                   client application. The postgres server daemon
                   accepts connections from clients and provides
                   access to content from PostgreSQL databases on
                   behalf of the clients.   0

To access insecure registries, add the fully-qualified name of the registry to the [registries.insecure] section of the /etc/containers/registries.conf file. For example:

[registries.search]
registries = ['myregistry.example.com']

[registries.insecure]
registries = ['myregistry.example.com']

Then, search for myimage images:

# podman search myregistry.example.com/myimage
INDEX      NAME  DESCRIPTION                                       STARS  OFFICIAL  AUTOMATED
example.com  myregistry.example.com/myimage
   The myimage container executes the ...   0

Now you can pull myimage image:

# podman pull myimage.example.com/myimage

To get container images from a remote registry (such as Red Hat’s own container registry) and add them to your local system, use the podman pull command:

# podman pull <registry>[:<port>]/[<namespace>/]<name>:<tag>

The <registry> is a host that provides a container registry service on TCP <port>. Together, <namespace> and <name> identify a particular image controlled by <namespace> at that registry. The <tag> is an additional name to locally-stored image, the default tag is latest. Always use fully qualified image names including: registry, namespace, image name and tag. When using short names, there is always an inherent risk of spoofing. Add registries that are trusted, that is registries which do not allow unknown or anonymous users to create accounts with arbitrary names.

Some registries also support raw <name>; for those, <namespace> is optional. When it is included, however, the additional level of hierarchy that <namespace> provides is useful to distinguish between images with the same <name>. For example:

The registries that Red Hat provides are registry.redhat.io (requiring authentication), registry.access.redhat.com (requires no authentication), and registry.connect.redhat.com (holds Red Hat Partner Connect program images). For details on the transition to registry.redhat.io, see Red Hat Container Registry Authentication . Before you can pull containers from registry.redhat.io, you need to authenticate. For example:

# podman login registry.redhat.io
Username: myusername
Password: ************
Login Succeeded!

Use the pull option to pull an image from a remote registry. To pull the rhel base image and rsyslog logging image from the Red Hat registry, type:

# podman pull registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
# podman pull registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rsyslog

An image is identified by a registry name (registry.redhat.io), a namespace name (ubi8) and the image name (ubi). You could also add a tag (which defaults to :latest if not entered). The repository name ubi, when passed to the podman pull command without the name of a registry preceding it, is ambiguous and could result in the retrieval of an image that originates from an untrusted registry. If there are multiple versions of the same image, adding a tag, such as latest to form a name such as ubi8/ubi:latest, lets you choose the image more explicitly.

To see the images that resulted from the above podman pull command, along with any other images on your system, type podman images:

REPOSITORY                        TAG    IMAGE ID      CREATED     SIZE
registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi       latest eb205f07ce7d  2 weeks ago 214MB
registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rsyslog  latest 85cfba5cd49c  2 weeks ago 234MB

The ubi and rsyslog images are now available on your local system for you to work with.

Using podman images you can see which images have been pulled to your local system. To look at the metadata associated with an image, use podman inspect.

# podman images
REPOSITORY                               TAG      IMAGE ID     CREATED      VIRTUAL SIZE
registry.redhat.io/rhel8/support-tools   latest   b3d6ce4e0043 2 days ago   234MB
registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi-init         latest   779a05997856 2 days ago   225MB
registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi              latest   a80dad1c1953 3 days ago   210MB

# skopeo inspect docker://registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi8-init
{
    "Name": "registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi8-init",
    "Digest": "sha256:53dfe24...",
    "RepoTags": [
        "8.0.0-9",
        "8.0.0",
        "latest"
    ],
    "Created": "2019-05-13T20:50:11.437931Z",
    "DockerVersion": "1.13.1",
    "Labels": {
        "architecture": "x86_64",
        "authoritative-source-url": "registry.access.redhat.com",
        "build-date": "2019-05-13T20:49:44.207967",
        "com.redhat.build-host": "cpt-0013.osbs.prod.upshift.rdu2.redhat.com",
        "com.redhat.component": "ubi8-init-container",
        "description": "The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Init image is designed to be...

You can add names to images to make it more intuitive to understand what they contain. Tagging images can also be used to identify the target registry for which the image is intended. Using the podman tag command, you essentially add an alias to the image that can consist of several parts. Those parts can include:

registryhost/username/NAME:tag

You can add just NAME if you like. For example:

# podman tag 474ff279782b myrhel8

In the previous example, the rhel8 image had an image ID of 474ff279782b. Using podman tag, the name myrhel8 now also is attached to the image ID. So you could run this container by name (rhel8 or myrhel8) or by image ID. Notice that without adding a :tag to the name, it was assigned :latest as the tag. You could have set the tag to 8.0 as follows:

# podman tag 474ff279782b myrhel8:8.0

To the beginning of the name, you can optionally add a user name and/or a registry name. The user name is actually the repository on Docker.io that relates to the user account that owns the repository. Tagging an image with a registry name was shown in the "Tagging Images" section earlier in this document. Here’s an example of adding a user name:

# podman tag 474ff279782b jsmith/myrhel8
# podman images | grep 474ff279782b
rhel8           latest  474ff279782b  7 days ago  139.6 MB
myrhel8         latest  474ff279782b  7 months ago  139.6 MB
myrhel8         7.1     474ff279782b  7 months ago  139.6 MB
jsmith/myrhel8  latest  474ff279782b  7 months ago  139.6 MB

Above, you can see all the image names assigned to the single image ID.

If you want to save a container image you have stored locally, you can use podman save to save the image to an archive file or directory and restore it later to another container environment. The archive you save can be in any of several different container image formats: docker-archive, oci-archive, oci-dir (directory with oci manifext type), or docker-dir (directory with v2s2 manifest type). After you save an image, you can store it or send it to someone else, then load the image later to reuse it. Here is an example of saving an image as a tarball in the default docker-archive format:

# podman save -o myrsyslog.tar registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rsyslog:latest
# file myrsyslog.tar
myrsyslog.tar: POSIX tar archive

The myrsyslog.tar file is now stored in your current directory. Later, when you are ready to reuse the tarball as a container image, you can import it to another podman environment as follows:

# podman load -i myrsyslog.tar
# podman images
REPOSITORY                       TAG    IMAGE ID      CREATED     SIZE
registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rsyslog latest 1f5313131bf0  7 weeks ago 235 MB

Instead of using save and load to store and reload an image, you can make a copy of a container instead, using podman export and podman import.

To see a list of images that are on your system, run the podman images command. To remove images you no longer need, use the podman rmi command, with the image ID or name as an option. (You must stop any containers run from an image before you can remove the image.) Here is an example:

# podman rmi ubi8-init
7e85c34f126351ccb9d24e492488ba7e49820be08fe53bee02301226f2773293

You can remove multiple images on the same command line:

# podman rmi registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rsyslog support-tools
46da8e23fa1461b658f9276191b4f473f366759a6c840805ed0c9ff694aa7c2f
85cfba5cd49c84786c773a9f66b8d6fca04582d5d7b921a308f04bb8ec071205

If you want to clear out all your images, you could use a command like the following to remove all images from your local registry (make sure you mean it before you do this!):

# podman rmi -a
1ca061b47bd70141d11dcb2272dee0f9ea3f76e9afd71cd121a000f3f5423731
ed904b8f2d5c1b5502dea190977e066b4f76776b98f6d5aa1e389256d5212993
83508706ef1b603e511b1b19afcb5faab565053559942db5d00415fb1ee21e96

To remove images that have multiple names (tags) associated with them, you need to add the force option to remove them. For example:

# podman rmi -a
A container associated with containers/storage, i.e. via Buildah, CRI-O, etc., may be associated with this image: 1de7d7b3f531

# podman rmi -f 1de7d7b3f531
1de7d7b3f531...

When you execute a podman run command, you essentially spin up and create a new container from a container image. The command you pass on the podman run command line sees the inside of the container as its running environment so, by default, very little can be seen of the host system. For example, by default, the running application sees:

If you want to make a directory from the host available to the container, map network ports from the container to the host, limit the amount of memory the container can use, or expand the CPU shares available to the container, you can do those things from the podman run command line. Here are some examples of podman run command lines that enable different features.

EXAMPLE #1 (Run a quick command): This podman command runs the cat /etc/os-release command to see the type of operating system used as the basis for the container. After the container runs the command, the container exits and is deleted (--rm).

# podman run --rm registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
VERSION="8.0 (Ootpa)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.0"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 (Ootpa)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8.0:latest"
HOME_URL="https://www.redhat.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"

REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=8.0
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="8.0"
...

EXAMPLE #2 (View the Dockerfile in the container): This is another example of running a quick command to inspect the content of a container from the host. All layered images that Red Hat provides include the Dockerfile from which they are built in /root/buildinfo. In this case you do not need to mount any volumes from the host.

# podman run --rm \
      registry.access.redhat.com/rhel8/rsyslog \
      ls /root/buildinfo
Dockerfile-rhel8-rsyslog-8

Now you know what the Dockerfile is called, you can list its contents:

# podman run --rm registry.access.redhat.com/rhel8/rsyslog \
    cat /root/buildinfo/Dockerfile-rhel8-rsyslog-8
FROM sha256:eb205f07ce7d0bb63bfe560...
LABEL maintainer="Red Hat, Inc."

RUN INSTALL_PKGS="\
rsyslog \
rsyslog-gnutls \
rsyslog-gssapi \
rsyslog-mysql \
rsyslog-pgsql \
rsyslog-relp \
" && yum -y install $INSTALL_PKGS && rpm -V --nosize
    --nofiledigest --nomtime --nomode $INSTALL_PKGS && yum clean all
LABEL com.redhat.component="rsyslog-container"
LABEL name="rhel8/rsyslog"
LABEL version="8.0"
...

EXAMPLE #3 (Run a shell inside the container): Using a container to launch a bash shell lets you look inside the container and change the contents. This sets the name of the container to mybash. The -i creates an interactive session and -t opens a terminal session. Without -i, the shell would open and then exit. Without -t, the shell would stay open, but you wouldn’t be able to type anything to the shell.

Once you run the command, you are presented with a shell prompt and you can start running commands from inside the container:

# podman run --name=mybash -it registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi /bin/bash
[root@ed904b8f2d5c/]#  yum install procps-ng
[root@ed904b8f2d5c/]#  ps -ef
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 00:46 pts/0    00:00:00 /bin/bash
root        35     1  0 00:51 pts/0    00:00:00 ps -ef
[root@49830c4f9cc4/]# exit

Although the container is no longer running once you exit, the container still exists with the new software package still installed. Use podman ps -a to list the container:

# podman ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE                 COMMAND   CREATED        STATUS                PORTS NAMES        IS INFRA
1ca061b47bd7 .../ubi8/ubi:latest   /bin/bash 8 minutes ago  Exited 12 seconds ago       musing_brown false
...

You could start that container again using podman start with the -ai options. For example:

# podman start -ai mybash
[root@ed904b8f2d5c/]#

EXAMPLE #4 (Bind mounting log files): One way to make log messages from inside a container available to the host system is to bind mount the host’s /dev/log device inside the container. This example illustrates how to run an application in a RHEL container that is named log_test that generates log messages (just the logger command in this case) and directs those messages to the /dev/log device that is mounted in the container from the host. The --rm option removes the container after it runs.

# podman run --name="log_test" -v /dev/log:/dev/log --rm \
     registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi logger "Testing logging to the host"
# journalctl -b | grep Testing
Nov 12 20:00:10 ubi8 root[17210]: Testing logging to the host

EXAMPLE #5 (Run a service as a daemon with a static IP address): The following example runs an rsyslog service as a daemon process, so it runs continuously in the background. It also tells podman to set the container network interface to a particular IP address (for example, 10.88.0.44). After that, you can run podman inspect command to check that the IP address was set properly:

# podman run -d --ip=10.88.0.44 registry.access.redhat.com/rhel7/rsyslog
efde5f0a8c723f70dd5cb5dc3d5039df3b962fae65575b08662e0d5b5f9fbe85
# podman inspect efde5f0a8c723 | grep 10.88.0.44
            "IPAddress": "10.88.0.44",

After you have some running containers, you can list both those containers that are still running and those that have exited or stopped with the podman ps command. You can also use the podman inspect to look at specific pieces of information within those containers.

# podman run -d registry.redhat.io/rhel8/rsyslog
# podman ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE              COMMAND         CREATED       STATUS            PORTS NAMES
74b1da000a11 rhel8/rsyslog /bin/rsyslog.sh 2 minutes ago Up About a minute       musing_brown

# podman ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE         COMMAND    CREATED    STATUS                PORTS NAMES     IS INFRA
d65aecc325a4 ubi8/ubi      /bin/bash  3 secs ago Exited (0) 5 secs ago peaceful_hopper false
74b1da000a11 rhel8/rsyslog rsyslog.sh 2 mins ago Up About a minute     musing_brown    false

# podman inspect 74b1da000a11
    ...
  "ID": "74b1da000a114015886c557deec8bed9dfb80c888097aa83f30ca4074ff55fb2",
  "Created": "2018-11-13T10:30:31.884673073-05:00",
  "Path": "/bin/rsyslog.sh",
  "Args": [
       "/bin/rsyslog.sh"
  ],
  "State": {
       OciVersion": "1.0.1-dev",
       Status": "running",
       Running": true,
    ...

# podman inspect --format='{{.NetworkSettings.IPAddress}}' 74b1da000a11
10.88.0.31

# podman inspect --format='{{.State.Pid}}' 74b1da000a11
19593
# ps -ef | grep 19593
root     19593 19583  0 10:30 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n
# podman inspect --format='{{.State.StartedAt}}' 74b1da000a11
2018-11-13 10:30:35.358175255 -0500 EST

If you ran a container, but didn’t remove it (--rm), that container is stored on your local system and ready to run again. To start a previously run container that wasn’t removed, use the start option. To stop a running container, use the stop option.

# podman start myrhel_httpd
myrhel_httpd

# podman start -a -i agitated_hopper
[root@d65aecc325a4 /]#  exit

# podman stop 74b1da000a11
74b1da000a114015886c557deec8bed9dfb80c888097aa83f30ca4074ff55fb2

# podman kill --signal="SIGHUP" 74b1da000a11
74b1da000a114015886c557deec8bed9dfb80c888097aa83f30ca4074ff55fb2

To see a list of containers that are still hanging around your system, run the podman ps -a command. To remove containers you no longer need, use the podman rm command, with the container ID or name as an option. You should stop any containers that are still running before removing them. Here is an example:

# podman rm goofy_wozniak

You can remove multiple containers on the same command line:

# podman rm clever_yonath furious_shockley drunk_newton

If you want to clear out all your containers, you could use a command like the following to remove all containers (not images) from your local system (make sure you mean it before you do this!):

# podman rm -a
56c496350bd534da7620fe2fa660526a6fc7f1c57b0298291cd2210311fe723b
83ad58c17b20f9e8271171f3023ae094dbfab6ce5708344a68feb121916961ca
a93b696a1f5629300382a8ce860c4ba42f664db98101e82c2dbcc2074b428faf
bee71e61b53bd8b036b2e8cb8f570ef8308403502760a27ee23a4b675d92b93d

Red Hat provides multiple base images that you can use as a starting point for your own images. These images are available through the Red Hat Registry (registry.access.redhat.com and registry.redhat.io) and described in the Red Hat Container Catalog.

For RHEL 8, there are standard, minimal and init base image available. Red Hat also provides a set of language runtime images, based on Application Streams, that you can build on when you are creating containers for applications that require specific runtimes. Runtime images include python, php, ruby, nodejs, and others. All of the RHEL 8 images are UBI images, which means that you can freely obtain and redistribute them.

There is a set of RHEL 7 images as well that you can run on RHEL 8 systems. For RHEL 7, there are both UBI (redistributable) and non-UBI (require subscription access and are non-redistributable) base images. Those images include three regular base images (rhel7, rhel-init, and rhel-minimal) and three UBI images (ubi7, ubi7-init, and ubi7-minimal).

Although Red Hat does not offer tools for running containers on RHEL 6 systems, it does offer RHEL 6 container images you can use. There are standard (rhel6) and Init (rhel6-init) base image available for RHEL 6, but no minimal RHEL 6 image. Likewise, there are no RHEL 6 UBI images.

UBI images were created so you can build your container images on a foundation of official Red Hat software that can be freely shared and deployed. From a technical perspective, they are nearly identical to legacy Red Hat Enterprise Linux images, which means they have great security, performance, and life cycles, but they are released under a different End User License Agreement. Here are some attributes of Red Hat UBI images:

Although the legacy RHEL 7 base images will continue to be supported, UBI images are recommended going forward. For that reason, examples in the rest of this chapter are done with RHEL 8 UBI images.

For more information about available Red Hat Universal Base Images, see the article Universal Base Images (UBI): Images, repositories, packages, and source code.

To pull UBI images to your system so you can use them with tools such as podman, buildah or skopeo, type the following:

# podman pull registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi:latest
# podman pull registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-minimal:latest

To check that the images are available on your system, type:

# podman images
REPOSITORY                                   TAG    IMAGE ID       CREATED      SIZE
registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-minimal  latest  c94a444803e3  8 hours ago  80.9 MB
registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi          latest  40b488f87628  17 hours ago 214 MB

When pulled in this way, images are available and usable by podman, buildah, skopeo and the CRI-O container image, but they are not available to the Docker service or docker command. To use these images with Docker, you can run docker pull instead.

After you pull a UBI image, you are free to push it to your own registry and share it with others. You can upgrade or add to that image from UBI yum repositories as you like. Here is an example of how to push a UBI image to your own or another third-party repository:

# podman pull registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
# podman tag registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi registry.example.com:5000/ubi8/ubi
# podman push registry.example.com:5000/ubi8/ubi

While there are few restrictions on how you use these images, there are some restrictions about how you can refer to them. For example, you can’t call those images Red Hat certified or Red Hat supported unless you certify it through the Red Hat Partner Connect Program, either with Red Hat Container Certification or Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification.

To start a container from a UBI image and run the bash shell in that image (so you can look around inside), do the following (type exit when you are done):

# podman run --rm -it registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-minimal:latest /bin/bash
[root@da9213157c51 /]#
# podman run --rm -it registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi:latest /bin/bash
bash-4.2#

While in the container:

On systems that include the Docker service, you can use docker run instead.

UBI images are built from 100% Red Hat content. These UBI images also provide a subset of Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages that are freely available to install for use with UBI. To add or update software, UBI images are pre-configured to point to the freely available yum repositories that hold official Red Hat RPMs.

To add packages from UBI repos to running UBI containers:

Keep in mind that installing and working with software packages directly in running containers is just for adding packages temporarily or learning about the repos. Refer to the “Build a UBI-based image” for more permanent ways of building UBI-based images.

When you add software to a UBI container, procedures differ for updating UBI images on a subscribed RHEL host or on an unsubscribed (or non-RHEL) system. Those two ways of working with UBI images are illustrated below.

# yum install --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=ubi-8-appstream --enablerepo=ubi-8-baseos bzip2

# yum install zsh

# yum install --enablerepo=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms zsh-html

# microdnf install bzip2

# microdnf install --enablerepo=rhel-7-server-rpms zsh
# microdnf install --enablerepo=rhel-7-server-rpms \
        --enablerepo=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms zsh-html

# yum install bzip2

# microdnf install bzip2

RUN microdnf update -y && rm -rf /var/cache/yum
RUN microdnf install httpd -y && microdnf clean all

Instead of installing troubleshooting tools directly to your Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 system, the toolbox utility offers a way to temporarily add those tools, then easily discard them when you are done. The toolbox utility works by:

The support-tools container allows you to:

The following illustrates a typical toolbox session.

At this point, the container is no longer running, but still exists on the system. You can choose to:

The next time you run toolbox, the new values from the .toolboxrc file are used.

Some Red Hat images include labels that provide pre-set command lines for working with those images. Using the podman container runlabel <label> command, you can tell podman to execute the command defined in that <label> for the image. Existing runlabels include:

Red Hat images that have one or more runlabels include the rsyslog and support-tools images. The following procedure illustrates how to use those images.

Using Buildah is different from building images with the docker command in the following ways:

Buildah is able to operate without Docker or other container runtimes by storing data separately and by including features that let you not only build images, but run those images as containers as well. By default, Buildah stores images in an area identified as containers-storage (/var/lib/containers).

There are more than a dozen options to use with the buildah command. Some of the main activities you can do with the buildah command include:

For more details on Buildah, see the GitHub Buildah page. The GitHub Buildah site includes man pages and software that might be more recent than is available with the RHEL version. Here are some other articles on Buildah that might interest you:

# yum -y install buildah

# rpm -qd buildah
# man buildah
buildah(1)         General Commands Manual         buildah(1)

NAME
 Buildah - A command line tool that facilitates building OCI container images.
...

To get a container image to use with buildah, use the buildah from command. Notice that if you are using RHEL 8.0, you may encounter problems with authenticating to the repository, see bug. Here’s how to get a RHEL 8 image from the Red Hat Registry as a working container to use with the buildah command:

# buildah from registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob…
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures
ubi-working-container
# buildah images
IMAGE ID      IMAGE NAME                          CREATED AT         SIZE
3da40a1670b5  registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi:latest  May 8, 2019 21:55  214 MB
# buildah containers
CONTAINER ID  BUILDER  IMAGE ID     IMAGE NAME         CONTAINER NAME
c6c9279ecc0f     *     3da40a1670b5 ...ubi8/ubi:latest ubi-working-container

Notice that the result of the buildah from command is an image (registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi:latest) and a working container that is ready to run from that image (ubi-working-container). Here’s an example of how to execute a command from that container:

# buildah run ubi-working-container cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.0

The image and container are now ready for use with Buildah.

With the buildah command, you can create a new image from a Dockerfile. The following steps show how to build an image that includes a simple script that is executed when the image is run.

This simple example starts with two files in the current directory: Dockerfile (which holds the instructions for building the container image) and myecho (a script that echoes a few words to the screen):

# ls
Dockerfile  myecho
# cat Dockerfile
FROM registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
ADD myecho /usr/local/bin
ENTRYPOINT "/usr/local/bin/myecho"
# cat myecho
echo "This container works!"
# chmod 755 myecho
# ./myecho
This container works!

With the Dockerfile in the current directory, build the new container as follows:

# buildah bud -t myecho .
STEP 1: FROM registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
STEP 2: ADD myecho /usr/local/bin
STEP 3: ENTRYPOINT "/usr/local/bin/myecho"

The buildah bud command creates a new image named myecho. To see that new image, type:

# buildah images
IMAGE NAME        IMAGE TAG  IMAGE ID      CREATED AT          SIZE
localhost/myecho  latest     a3882af49784  Jun 21, 2019 12:21  216 MB

Next, you can run the image, to make sure it is working.

# podman run localhost/myecho
This container works!

# buildah from localhost/myecho
# buildah inspect localhost/myecho | less
{
 "Type": "buildah 0.0.1",
 "FromImage": "docker.io/library/myecho:latest",
 "FromImage-ID": "e2b190ac8...",
 "Config": "{\"created\":\"2018-11-13...

 "Entrypoint": [
      "/usr/local/bin/myecho"
   ],
   "WorkingDir": "/",
   "Labels": {
      "architecture": "x86_64",
      "authoritative-source-url": "registry.access.redhat.com",
      "build-date": "2018-09-19T20:46:28.459833",

# buildah inspect myecho-working-container | less
{
    "Type": "buildah 0.0.1",
    "FromImage": "docker.io/library/myecho:latest",
    "FromImage-ID": "e2b190a...",
    "Config": "{\"created\":\"2018-11-13T19:5...
...
    "Container": "myecho-working-container",
    "ContainerID": "c0cd2e494d...",
    "MountPoint": "",
    "ProcessLabel": "system_u:system_r:svirt_lxc_net_t:s0:c89,c921",
    "MountLabel": "",

There are several ways you can modify an existing container with the buildah command and commit those changes to a new container image:

Once you have modified the container, use buildah commit to commit the changes to a new image.

# buildah containers
CONTAINER ID BUILDER IMAGE ID     IMAGE NAME  CONTAINER NAME

dc8f21af4a47   *     1456eedf8101 registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi:latest
               ubi-working-container
6d1ffccb557d   *     ab230ac5aba3 docker.io/library/myecho:latest
               myecho-working-container

# mymount=$(buildah mount myecho-working-container)
# echo $mymount
/var/lib/containers/storage/devicemapper/mnt/176c273fe28c23e5319805a2c48559305a57a706cc7ae7bec7da4cd79edd3c02/rootfs

# echo 'echo "We even modified it."' >> $mymount/usr/local/bin/myecho

# buildah commit myecho-working-container containers-storage:myecho2

# buildah images
IMAGE ID     IMAGE NAME     CREATED AT          SIZE
a7e06d3cd0e2 docker.io/library/myecho2:latest
                            Oct 12, 2017 15:15  3.144 KB
# buildah from docker.io/library/myecho2:latest
myecho2-working-container
# podman run docker.io/library/myecho2
This container works!
We even modified it.

# buildah umount myecho-working-container

# cat newecho
echo "I changed this container"
# chmod 755 newecho

# buildah from myecho:latest
myecho-working-container-2

# buildah copy myecho-working-container-2 newecho /usr/local/bin

# buildah config --entrypoint "/bin/sh -c /usr/local/bin/newecho "myecho-working-container-2

# buildah run myecho-working-container-2
I changed this container

# buildah commit myecho-working-container-2 containers-storage:mynewecho

Instead of starting with a base image, you can create a new container that holds no content and only a small amount of container metadata. This is referred to as a scratch container. Here are a few issues to consider when choosing to create an image starting from a scratch container with the buildah command:

This example adds a Web service (httpd) to a container and configures it to run. To begin, create a scratch container:

# buildah from scratch
working-container

This creates just an empty container (no image) that you can mount as follows:

# scratchmnt=$(buildah mount working-container)
# echo $scratchmnt
/var/lib/containers/storage/devicemapper/mnt/cc92011e9a2b077d03a97c0809f1f3e7fef0f29bdc6ab5e86b85430ec77b2bf6/rootfs

Initialize an RPM database within the scratch image and add the redhat-release package (which includes other files needed for RPMs to work):

# yum install -y --releasever=8 --installroot=$scratchmnt redhat-release

Install the httpd service to the scratch directory:

# yum install -y --setopt=reposdir=/etc/yum.repos.d \
     --installroot=$scratchmnt \
     --setopt=cachedir=/var/cache/dnf httpd

Add some text to an index.html file in the container, so you will be able to test it later:

# echo "Your httpd container from scratch worked." > $scratchmnt/var/www/html/index.html

Instead of running httpd as an init service, set a few buildah config options to run the httpd daemon directly from the container:

# buildah config --cmd "/usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND" working-container
# buildah config --port 80/tcp working-container
# buildah commit working-container localhost/myhttpd:latest

For now, you can use the Image ID to run the new image as a container with the podman command:

# podman images
REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
localhost/myhttpd   latest              47c0795d7b0e        9 minutes ago       665.6 MB
# podman run -p 8080:80 -d --name httpd-server 47c0795d7b0e
# curl localhost:8080
Your httpd container from scratch worked.

When you are done with particular containers or images, you can remove them with buildah rm or buildah rmi, respectively. Here are some examples.

To remove the container created in the previous section, you could type the following to see the mounted container, unmount it and remove it:

# buildah containers
CONTAINER ID  BUILDER  IMAGE ID     IMAGE NAME                       CONTAINER NAME
05387e29ab93     *     c37e14066ac7 docker.io/library/myecho:latest  myecho-working-container
# buildah mount
05387e29ab93 /var/lib/containers/storage/devicemapper/mnt/9274181773a.../rootfs
# buildah umount 05387e29ab93
# buildah rm 05387e29ab93
05387e29ab93151cf52e9c85c573f3e8ab64af1592b1ff9315db8a10a77d7c22

To remove the image you created previously, you could type the following:

# buildah rmi docker.io/library/myecho:latest
untagged: docker.io/library/myecho:latest
ab230ac5aba3b5a0a7c3d2c5e0793280c1a1b4d2457a75a01b70a4b7a9ed415a

With Buildah, you can push and pull container images between your local system and public or private container registries. The following examples show how to:

Use the skopeo command, in tandem with the buildah command, to query registries for information about container images.

# buildah images
IMAGE ID     IMAGE NAME                       CREATED AT          SIZE
cb702d492ee9 docker.io/library/myecho2:latest Nov 12, 2018 16:50     3.143 KB

# buildah push --tls-verify=false myecho2:latest localhost:5000/myecho2:latest
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob sha256:e4efd0...
...
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures

# curl http://localhost:5000/v2/_catalog
{"repositories":["myatomic","myecho2"]}
# curl http://localhost:5000/v2/myecho2/tags/list
{"name":"myecho2","tags":["latest"]}
# skopeo inspect --tls-verify=false docker://localhost:5000/myecho2:latest | less
{
    "Name": "localhost:5000/myecho2",
    "Digest": "sha256:8999ff6050...",
    "RepoTags": [
        "latest"
    ],
    "Created": "2017-11-21T16:50:25.830343Z",
    "DockerVersion": "",
    "Labels": {
        "architecture": "x86_64",
        "authoritative-source-url": "registry.redhat.io",

# systemctl start docker
# docker pull localhost:5000/myecho2
# docker run localhost:5000/myecho2
This container works!

# buildah push --creds testaccountXX:My00P@sswd \
     docker.io/library/myecho2:latest docker://testaccountXX/myecho2:latest

# podman run docker.io/textaccountXX/myecho2:latest
This container works!
# buildah from docker.io/textaccountXX/myecho2:latest
myecho2-working-container-2
# podman run myecho2-working-container-2
This container works!

When you set up a container to start as a systemd service, you can define the order in which the containerized service runs, check for dependencies (like making sure another service is running, a file is available or a resource is mounted), and even have a container start by using the runc command.

This section provides an example of a container that is configured to run directly on a RHEL system as a systemd service. To learn about automatic generation of systemd service file, see Generate systemd unit file.

To learn more about configuring services with systemd, refer to the System Administrator’s Guide chapter called Managing Services with systemd and article Running containers with Podman and shareable systemd services.

A package with the systemd initialization system is included in the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux Init base image named registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-init This means that applications created to be managed with systemd can be started and managed inside a container. A container running systemd will:

The general steps for building a container that is ready to be used as a systemd services is:

In this example, we build a container by creating a Dockerfile that installs and configures a Web server (httpd) to start automatically by the systemd service (/sbin/init) when the container is run on a host system.

At this point, you have a container that starts up a Web server as a systemd service inside the container. Install and run any services you like in this same way by modifying the Dockerfile and configuring data and opening ports as appropriate.

The podman command (which stands for Pod Manager) lets you run containers as standalone entities, without requiring that Kubernetes, the Docker runtime, or any other container runtime be involved. It is a tool that can act as a replacement for the docker command, implementing the same command-line syntax, while it adds even more container management features. The podman features include:

Here are a few implementation features of podman you should know about:

# podman pull registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
Trying to pull registry.redhat...Getting image source signatures
Copying blob sha256:d1fe25896eb5cbcee...
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures
fd1ba0b398a82d56900bb798c...

# podman images
REPOSITORY                    TAG      IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi   latest   de9c26f23799   5 weeks ago   80.1MB
registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi   latest   fd1ba0b398a8   5 weeks ago   211MB

# podman inspect registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi | less
[
    {
        "Id": "4bbd153adf8487a8a5114af0d6...",
        "Digest": "sha256:9999e735605c73f...",
        "RepoTags": [
            "registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi:latest"
        ],
        "RepoDigests": [
            "registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi/rhel@sha256:9999e7356...

# podman run -it registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi /bin/bash
[root@8414218c04f9 /]# ps -ef
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 13:48 pts/0    00:00:00 /bin/bash
root        21     1  0 13:49 pts/0    00:00:00 ps -ef
[root@8414218c04f9 /]# exit
#

# podman ps -a
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                             COMMAND
   CREATED AT                      STATUS                  PORTS NAMES
440becd26893   registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi-minimal:latest  /bin/bash
   2018-05-10 09:02:52 -0400 EDT   Exited (0) About an hour ago  happy_hodgkin
8414218c04f9   registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi:latest          /bin/bash
   2018-05-10 09:48:07 -0400 EDT   Exited (0) 14 minutes ago     nostalgic_boyd

# podman rm 440becd26893

# podman rmi registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
# podman rmi de9c26f23799
# podman rmi -f registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi:latest

"runC" is a lightweight, portable implementation of the Open Container Initiative (OCI) container runtime specification. runC unites a lot of the low-level features that make running containers possible. It shares a lot of low-level code with Docker but it is not dependent on any of the components of the Docker platform.

runc supports Linux namespaces, live migration, and has portable performance profiles. It also provides full support for Linux security features such as SELinux, control groups (cgroups), seccomp, and others. You can build and run images with runc, or you can run OCI-compatible images with runc.

$ runc spec

    "args": [
      "sh"
    ],

# podman pull registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi
# podman export $(podman create registry.redhat.io/ubi8/ubi) > rhel.tar
# mkdir -p rhel-runc/rootfs
# tar -C rhel-runc/rootfs -xf rhel.tar
# runc spec -b rhel-runc
# vi rhel-runc/config.json   Change any setting you like
# runc create -b rhel-runc/ rhel-container
# runc start rhel-container
sh-4.2#

# runc start <container_name>

With the skopeo command, you can work with container images from registries without using the docker daemon or the docker command. Registries can include the Docker Registry, your own local registries, Red Hat Quay or OpenShift registries. Activities you can do with skopeo include:

Like the buildah command and other tools that rely on the containers/image library, the skopeo command can work with images from container storage areas other than those associated with Docker. Available transports to other types of container storage include: containers-storage (for images stored by buildah and CRI-O), ostree (for atomic and system containers), oci (for content stored in an OCI-compliant directory), and others. See the skopeo man page for details.

To try out skopeo, you could set up a local registry, then run the commands that follow to inspect, copy, and download image layers. If you want to follow along with the examples, start by doing the following:

The rest of this section describes how to inspect, copy and get layers from the RHEL image.

# skopeo inspect docker://docker.io/library/mariadb
{
    "Name": "docker.io/library/mariadb",
    "Tag": "latest",
    "Digest": "sha256:d3f56b143b62690b400ef42e876e628eb5e488d2d0d2a35d6438a4aa841d89c4",
    "RepoTags": [
        "10.0.15",
        "10.0.16",
        "10.0.17",
        "10.0.19",
...
    "Created": "2018-06-10T01:53:48.812217692Z",
    "DockerVersion": "1.10.3",
    "Labels": {},
    "Architecture": "amd64",
    "Os": "linux",
    "Layers": [
...

# skopeo inspect docker://localhost/myubi8
{
    "Name": "localhost/myubi8",
    "Tag": "latest",
    "Digest": "sha256:4e09c308a9ddf56c0ff6e321d135136eb04152456f73786a16166ce7cba7c904",
    "RepoTags": [
        "latest"
    ],
    "Created": "2018-06-16T17:27:13Z",
    "DockerVersion": "1.7.0",
    "Labels": {
        "Architecture": "x86_64",
        "Authoritative_Registry": "registry.access.redhat.com",
        "BZComponent": "rhel-server-docker",
        "Build_Host": "rcm-img01.build.eng.bos.redhat.com",
        "Name": "myubi8",
        "Release": "75",
        "Vendor": "Red Hat, Inc.",
        "Version": "8.0"
    },
    "Architecture": "amd64",
    "Os": "linux",
    "Layers": [
        "sha256:16dc1f96e3a1bb628be2e00518fec2bb97bd5933859de592a00e2eb7774b6ecf"
    ]
}

# skopeo copy docker://localhost/myubi8 dir:/root/test/
INFO[0000] Downloading myubi8/blobs/sha256:16dc1f96e3a1bb628be2e00518fec2bb97bd5933859de592a00e2eb7774b6ecf
# ls /root/test
16dc1f96e3a1bb628be2e00518fec2bb97bd5933859de592a00e2eb7774b6ecf.tar manifest.json

# skopeo layers docker://localhost/myubi8
INFO[0000] Downloading myubi8/blobs/sha256:16dc1f96e3a1bb628be2e00518fec2bb97bd5933859de592a00e2eb7774b6ecf
# find .
./layers-myubi8-latest-698503105
./layers-myubi-latest-698503105/manifest.json
./layers-myubi8-latest-698503105/16dc1f96e3a1bb628be2e00518fec2bb97bd5933859de592a00e2eb7774b6ecf.tar