How to delete podman containers from deleted accounts?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
  • podman

Issue

  • uid from an organisation is retired but the container data is still present and occupies space on the host

Resolution

  • graphRoot is the location where podman data of the user is stored and runRoot is the location where the podman metadata for the user is stored. These need to be removed to get rid of the unwanted containers, volumes, images, etc. of the deleted user

  • Below steps can be followed to achieve the same

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ whoami
quickcluster

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman images
REPOSITORY                       TAG         IMAGE ID      CREATED      SIZE
registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8  latest      b2ec169a404e  13 days ago  212 MB

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman ps -a
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                                   COMMAND     CREATED        STATUS        PORTS       NAMES
e4efdd7f777e  registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8:latest  /bin/bash   2 minutes ago  Up 2 minutes              gifted_brown

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman volume ls
DRIVER      VOLUME NAME
local       vol-test

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman info | grep -i -e runroot -e graphroot
  graphRoot: /home/quickcluster/.local/share/containers/storage
  graphRootAllocated: 42832211968
  graphRootUsed: 5195296768
  runRoot: /run/user/1000/containers

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ sudo su -
Last login: Mon Sep 23 11:49:14 EDT 2024 on pts/1

[root@node-0 ~]# rm -rf /home/quickcluster/.local/share/containers/storage

[root@node-0 ~]# rm -rf /run/user/1000/containers

[root@node-0 ~]# exit
logout

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman images
REPOSITORY  TAG         IMAGE ID    CREATED     SIZE

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman ps -a
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE       COMMAND     CREATED     STATUS      PORTS       NAMES

[quickcluster@node-0 ~]$ podman volume ls

Root Cause

  • podman data for a user need not necessarily be removed when a user is invalid or removed from the organization profile; it needs to be removed manually

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