podman is a multi-platform tool allowing management of containers, pods and images and an alternative to Docker.

Both solutions allow user to deploy numerous web apps, database systems and other tools on single system, regardless of if those were designed to run on one system or in multiple instances.

There significant differences between podman and Docker although podman has been designed around intention of being command-line compatible with Docker. Both appear to be suitable for production use with podman being apparently easier to run without root service (although Docker offers optional rootless setup).

• Setup

  sudo apt install podman
  sudo useradd --create-home --shell /bin/bash podmanuser
  sudo loginctl enable-linger podmanuser

• .bashrc setup to enable systemctl --user

  export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/$UID"
  export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/bus"

• Example Dockerfile

  FROM ubuntu:jammy
  RUN apt update && apt upgrade
  COPY script.sh /script.sh
  EXPOSE 80
  ENTRYPOINT /bin/bash /script.sh

• Building image from Dockerfile in working directory

  podman build --tag image_name .

• Starting image as container example

  podman stop container_name
  podman rm container_name
  podman run \
    --publish host_port:container_port \
    --name container_name \
    --restart always \
    image_name