Podman remote container host setup for Windows

Prerequisites:

• PowerShell v7.2 or above
• Vagrant on Windows
• VMware Workstation Pro or VMWare Workstation Player
• Vagrant vmware Utility
• Podman Windows Client

Vagrant, VMWare Workstation Pro/Player, and Podman Windows Client can be installed from winget (Windows Package Manager Client) command line tool on Windows 10 & 11.

winget install --id Hashicorp.Vagrant

winget install --id RedHat.Podman

Notes:

1. You need to re-open command line window to be able to use Podman cli program

Setup:

1. Git clone the main branch of the repository.
2. Inside the git clone folder, run vagrant up to create the Vagrant environment in PowerShell:
3. Generate an ed25519 SSH keypair files on Windows host, if you’ve never created before:

    ssh-keygen -t ed25519
   

4. Copy the generated public key into the Vagrant Virtual Machine by following command in PowerShell:

    type $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_ed25519.pub | vagrant ssh -c "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
   

   

5. Run vagrant ssh-config to get the SSH host binding port of the Vagrant VM:

6. Run following command to get the remote socket path information of Podman in the Vagrant VM:

    vagrant ssh -c 'podman --remote info --format={{".Host.RemoteSocket.Path"}}'
   

   
   The above example shows the socket path is /tmp/podman-run-1000/podman/podman.sock.

7. Run following command to add a remote VM connection settings on Host Windows machine, this example is using Port 2222, remote socket path is /tmp/podman-run-1000/podman/podman.sock, and the connection name is vg_podman:

    podman --remote system connection add vg_podman --identity $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_ed25519 ssh://vagrant@127.0.0.1:2222/tmp/podman-run-1000/podman/podman.sock
   

   Then use podman system connection list to verify the connection setting.
   

Notes

1. After finish above steps, you can use podman info on Windows to verify remote container host connection status.
2. If you need to recreate the VM, Invoke vagrant destroy -f in the git clone folder, then vagrant up again. Only needs do above step 4. to copy the ed25519 public key from Windows into new VM.
3. The VM will automatically suspend when Windows system shutdown or reboot, it’s state can be known via invoke vagrant status in the git clone folder, you need to resume the VM by running vagrant up to be able to use Podman host again.