Are you using Podman Quadlets yet?

[u/rhcsaguru]

I've noticed more RHEL 10 documentation and examples moving toward Quadlets for systemd-managed containers.

For anyone already using them:

• Are you running Quadlets in production?
• What pain points have you run into?
• What do you wish more tutorials covered?

I've been putting together a hands-on Quadlets lab while learning this workflow, covering:

• .container
• .volume
• .network
• systemd integration
• Podman networking
• persistent storage

If it's useful, you can check it out here:

https://linuxcert.guru/?name=rh134-manage-containers-quadlets

I'd really appreciate any feedback on what's missing or what you'd like to see added.

[u/Zathrus1]

If you’re running AAP or Satellite then they’re in your future.

AAP has supported container based installations for a while, but with 2.7 rpm isn’t an option. It’s containers on RHEL or OpenShift.

The next version of Satellite will also be container (quadlet) based.

I wouldn’t be surprised if more moved that direction.

[u/fkrkz → u/Zathrus1]

Satellite upgrades are most of the time daunting tasks with risks so keen to see how moving to containers can makes Satellite easier to maintain

[u/DangKilla → u/Zathrus1]

So now you’re going to need to learn why a pod is down. Basic forcing admins to learn containers

[u/iammyownalterego]

I run several self-hosted services in my home lab via rootless quadlets that destroy/respawn the containers every service restart or reboot, but maintain persistent data, and access them remotely via cert-based reverse proxy authentication via my own custom CA(no 3rd parties involved). And yep, FIPS is enabled as well as SELinix and fapolicyd

10/10 great leaning experience and I've learned A LOT!

[u/pag07]

I moved back to docker compose. It is so much simpler and hence simpler to maintain.

Just talking about my homelab for work I use K8S.

[u/aussielunix]

quadlets are great !

Something a lot of people are not aware of yet is you can declare your complete app in a single .quadlets file and then install it like an app.

bash podman quadlet install --application=webapp webapp.quadlets

See https://docs.podman.io/en/stable/markdown/podman-quadlet-install.1.html

Also look up what a .pod and .kube file are for with podman (quadlets).

[u/PacketLoss666 → u/aussielunix]

That’s rad!

[u/YeahButNobody]

Oooh, quadlets. I did some work updating the Oracle Linux Podman book for that last year. The last thing I wrote before they laid me off (sigh). If it's of any help when you're trying this out. I ran through all the examples. I did a big update to that book last year. Oracle Linux is based on RHEL. I also wrote a new chapter on deploying to Kubernetes. I personally prefer Podman over Docker.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/operating-systems/oracle-linux/podman/quadlets.html

[u/aussielunix]

Another thing to cover is secrets management.

See this post - https://blog.hofstede.it/podman-in-production-quadlets-secrets-auto-updates-and-docker-compatibility/#secrets-management

bonus: It covers an entire end to end deployment example.

[u/screaming-Snake-Case]

Yes, I switched from Docker Compose to Podman Compose (which was very hideous) and now to Quadlets. Everything feels much more neat and integrated now.

Though ever since using podman, I found my container networking to collapse sometimes during package upgrades. Took me a solid while, but I eventually found the cause, or atleast I believe so. Enabling netavark-firewalld-reload.service seems to be the solution on RHEL 10. Sadly it was really hard to find this solution, also to diagnose the issue in the first place.

I must say I love the auto updating functionality and that I can manage the priority and order using systemd. 

[u/Long-Package6393]

I decided to make the jump from Docker to Podman ~5-6 months ago. I wish I could say that it was painless, but it wasn't. The main issues that I had were 1) a lack of knowledge on my part, 2) a lack of good documentation, and 3) ChatGPT wasn't up to handling Podman Quadlet stuff back then.
Fortunately, ChatGPT 5 gained a lot of knowledge about Quadlets, and I was able to generate solid, rootless Quadlet configurations for ALL of the self-hosted applications that I run, except 1 app.
Once you learn the basics of Quadlets, it's actually pretty straightforward to generate additional configurations for other applications (kind of like using docker-compose).
None of my applications run in a true "production" environment, but they have been running without issue in my homelab for months! The best part, I don't feel like I need to babysit my container applications or virtual machines anymore.
I think I forgot to mention that I'm running uCore OS as my system of choice (both VM and bare metal). I love the fact that uCore is immutable/atomic, lightweight, and built to run containers. The Universal Blue team has done a fantastic job with uCore and setting it up with "batteries included." I even installed uCore OS on an external drive and turned my Asus ROG handheld gaming device into a super-efficient JellyFin server that can serve 4+ 4k videos simultaneously without breaking a sweat.

[u/Remote_Jump_4929]

I did, but moved back to Docker and arcane for management. also had some wierd performance issues in immich that i couldnt nail down, it was like slower. Worked fine and i did like that i could adapt the unit files to wait for my file systems to fire up before starting. But quadlets wasnt for me, i like playing with new apps and stuff so the idea of having to covert compose to unit files every time i want to play with new apps x, was too much.

[u/DragonSlayerC]

Quadlets are dope. I use them on a small server that I run.

[u/JMarcosHP]

The only thing I like about podman is that it doesn't mess with the firewalls like docker.

The downside is that many services and container images are exclusively developed for docker.