For People In A Hurry: How To Install Podman on RaspberryPi (but still use it as Docker)

README.md

Note

This guide provides a copy-paste-observe list of quick instructional steps to install Podman instantly on a RaspberryPi, assuming it has a Linux-based operating system on it.

Note

Verified on RaspberryPi 4B.

Warning

1. Podman does not run a daemon like Docker so --restart docker syntax does not work.
   • Workaround is to manually create a daemon service for each podman container. See below.
2. Podman typically runs rootless so you can mount rootful directories similar to Docker.

Instructions 📘

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt install --no-install-recommends -y podman

sudo apt install -y slirp4netns uidmap fuse-overlayfs

sudo usermod --add-subuids 100000-165535 $(whoami)
sudo usermod --add-subgids 100000-165535 $(whoami)

Create user-level container configuration and use fuse-overlayfs for better performance on SD cards.

mkdir -p ~/.config/containers

cat > ~/.config/containers/storage.conf <<EOF
[storage]
driver = "overlay"

[storage.options.overlay]
mount_program = "/usr/bin/fuse-overlayfs"
EOF

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install podman-docker -y

Verify ✔️

Run docker ps below and you should see something similar below in your terminal:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                COMMAND                  CREATED        STATUS                    PORTS                                                   NAMES

docker run --rm docker.io/library/hello-world

Reference(s) 📚

• https://oneuptime.com/blog/post/2026-03-16-install-podman-raspberry-pi/view

Workaround: Auto-Starting Containers on Boot 🔧 ⌚

1. Create a stopped container for systemd to use as a template

podman create \
  --name pi-web \
  -p 8080:80 \
  -v ~/my-website:/usr/share/nginx/html:ro \
  docker.io/library/nginx:alpine

2. Generate a systemd service for the container

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
podman generate systemd --new --name pi-web > ~/.config/systemd/user/container-pi-web.service

3. Enable service

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable container-pi-web.service

4. Enable lingering for the pi user

sudo loginctl enable-linger $(whoami)