maggesandClaude Sonnet 5
51b7262b72
First live end-to-end install on real Unraid hardware (all 8 built
packages installed via upgradepkg, rc.podman started, containers
pulled/run/networked/port-mapped) — surfaced five genuine bugs no
amount of container-based CI testing could have caught, since none of
them exist inside the vbatts/slackware:15.0 build container:
1. rc.podman never created $PODMAN_LOG_DIR before redirecting the
podman system service's output into it, so the service failed to
even start ("No such file or directory"). Added it alongside the
existing PODMAN_RUN_DIR mkdir.
2. config/storage.conf hardcoded a [storage] table, and
podman-config.sh's `sync` step appended a second one at boot with
the real graphroot/runroot — TOML forbids defining the same table
twice. Removed the template's [storage] entirely; sync already
generates the whole thing.
3. config/policy.json had a "_comment" pseudo-field for
documentation, but containers/image's policy parser rejects any
unknown top-level key outright. JSON has no comment syntax; moved
the rationale into docs/ARCHITECTURE.md instead.
4. netavark >= 2.0 dropped its iptables firewall driver entirely
(verified: passing "iptables" is flatly rejected) — nftables or
firewalld are the only remaining options, and firewalld needs
systemd/dbus, which Unraid has neither of. Set firewall_driver =
"nftables" explicitly and documented that Unraid OS doesn't ship
the `nft` binary this needs (a slackware64 nftables package works;
not yet wired into the build/install pipeline — see follow-up).
5. Every container failed with "crun: pivot_root: Invalid argument".
Root cause: Unraid's / is permanently the kernel's initial "rootfs"
pseudo-filesystem (Unraid never pivots to a real one at boot — the
whole OS runs from RAM), and pivot_root(2) unconditionally rejects
that as the old root. This is not new: Docker/runc hits the exact
same kernel restriction on this exact host and silently falls back
to an MS_MOVE-based chroot; crun has no such fallback, only a
--no-pivot flag with no config-file equivalent. Added
plugin/sbin/crun-no-pivot.sh, a thin wrapper that scans crun's full
argument list (podman puts global flags before the subcommand, so
the subcommand isn't reliably $1) and injects --no-pivot right
after create/run, and pointed containers.conf's crun runtime at it.
Also fixed the podman.plg postinstall's chmod glob
(`podman-*.sh` -> `*.sh`), which would have skipped this new
non-podman-prefixed sbin script.
Verified end-to-end on the real host: pull, run, real network
connectivity (wget through the container's bridge), and a published
port actually serving HTTP (curl through -p 8099:80 to nginx) all
work. --no-pivot's security tradeoff (disabling one particular
container-escape mitigation) was explicitly discussed with and
approved by the user before committing, given it must be the default
for any container to start at all on this platform.
Follow-up not yet done: nftables (needed for #4) is not yet a
packages/ component in the reproducible build pipeline — it was only
installed manually on the test host for this verification run.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
unraid-podman
A native Unraid plugin that integrates Podman as a first-class container engine, running alongside Docker.
Status: architecture / scaffolding stage. No functional code has been shipped yet. This repository currently defines the target structure and design; see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the full technical plan and docs/ROADMAP.md for what's coming.
Goals
- Run rootful Podman on Unraid with full persistence across reboots (config, images, containers, volumes, networks) despite Unraid's RAM-root design.
- Coexist cleanly with Docker — no shared storage, network, or firewall conflicts.
- Follow Unraid's native conventions:
.plginstallation, Slackware.txzpackages, BSD-stylerc.dinit scripts (no systemd), config on/boot, data on the array/cache. - Provide a WebUI in the Dynamix style once the CLI-driven core is stable.
- Eventually make Docker optional/disable-able once feature parity is reached.
See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the full rationale behind every decision below.
Repository structure
.
├── .github/ CI workflows, issue/PR templates, community health files
├── assets/ Icons, screenshots, branding used by the plugin & GUI
├── config/ Default containers/storage/registries config templates
├── docs/ Architecture, install guide, FAQ, troubleshooting, roadmap
├── packages/ Slackware .txz build recipes (podman, conmon, crun, netavark, ...)
├── plugin/ The .plg manifest, rc.d init script, sbin helper scripts,
│ and the default files deployed to /boot/config/plugins/podman
├── scripts/ Build, release, and developer tooling scripts
└── webui/ Dynamix-style WebUI pages (plugins/podman/), added in a later phase
Installation
Not yet available. Once packages and the .plg manifest are published, installation
will be the standard Unraid flow: Plugins → Install Plugin with the .plg URL, or
via the Unraid Community Applications store once listed there.
Documentation
- Architecture — full technical design (directory layout, packaging, init scripts, persistence, networking, autostart, updates, rollback, logging, error handling, future WebUI).
- Roadmap — phased delivery plan.
- Install guide — end-user installation steps (draft).
- Troubleshooting — common problems and diagnostics.
- FAQ
Contributing
Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev workflow, coding conventions, and how the packaging pipeline works. Please also review our Code of Conduct.
Security
Rootful Podman's API socket is root-equivalent. See SECURITY.md for the vulnerability disclosure process and known security considerations.
License
Licensed under the MIT License.