Podman container fails to start with "readObjectStart" or "exec format error" after an incomplete system update.

Issue

When attempting to start a podman container using the podman start command, the operation fails with one of the following errors:

• The primary error message indicates a failure during container creation:

Error: unable to start container "my-container": container create failed (no logs from conmon): conmon bytes "": readObjectStart: expect { or n, but found, error found in #0 byte of......

• Running podman info may show an exec format error when trying to get the version of the OCI runtime (e.g., crun):

level=error msg="Getting info on OCI runtime crun: getting version of OCI runtime crun: /usr/bin/crun --version failed: (fork/exec /usr/bin/crun: exec format error)"

• The output of podman info may also show ociRuntime: null and conmon: null.

This issue is often observed after a system was abruptly halted or rebooted (e.g., due to a power failure or system hang) during a package update process.