Cannot run bootc container on localhost - getting "connection refused"

[zdohnal]

Hi,

I'm a bootc newbie, following https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/bootc/getting-started/ . I have following Containerfile:

FROM quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:41
RUN dnf -y install setup
RUN dnf -y install cups && dnf clean all

which I build by:

podman build -t localhost/zdohnal/cups:bootc bootc/cups

and then try to run by bootc:

$ podman machine init --rootful --now
$ podman-bootc run --filesystem=xfs localhost/zdohnal/cups:bootc

but the last command ends with error:

$ podman-bootc run --filesystem=xfs localhost/zdohnal/cups:bootc
Trying to pull localhost/zdohnal/cups:bootc...
Error: unable to install bootc image: failed to pull image: initializing source docker://localhost/zdohnal/cups:bootc: pinging container registry localhost: Get "https://localhost/v2/": dial tcp [::1]:443: connect: connection refused

Do you know what can be the issue? podman-machine, podman-bootc do not have any service to run, and podman service running does not have any effect.

OS: Fedora 41
Podman:

podman-5.3.2-1.fc41.x86_64
podman-machine-5.3.2-1.fc41.x86_64
podman-bootc-v0.1.1~123~g96bfc8f-1.20241210141826117469.main.123.96bfc8f.fc41.x86_64

Thank you in advance!

Zdenek

[zdohnal]

I have tried to install podman-docker package (due having docker in the URL in the error, so I thought it is issue of bad name), but no change.

[zdohnal]

Sorr for not updating the issue - in the end (IMO) it is issue with documentation at https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/bootc/getting-started/ . Based on the docs, it looks like podman-machine is needed only for running the bootc container, but that's not correct. You have to have podman-machine running before building bootc container, so the container gets built into the podman machine, not on your localhost. Then the bootc container was started correctly.

The tricky thing is that if you build locally once, you have to specify you want to build into podman machine instead of locally - you have to find out the podman machine name (do podman system connection list), and use that name for -c argument when running podman build. Switching the default connection did not work for some reason at first time, so we had to use -c <name> argument. The podman-bootc worked.

[lulinqing]

Thanks @zdohnal !

It confused me at first since podman build -c doesn't have connection argument and returned an error saying -c is for cpu-shares.
Then it hit me that --connection is an argument for podman so it have to be between "podman" and "build" like podman -c podman-machine-default-root build -t testing_image -f ./Containerfile

However, there is unexpected issue that all userspace packages specificed in Containerfile were installed as expected, but the kernel wasn't updated for some reason (unless converted to qcow2 image and started with qemu).

[vrothberg]

Thanks for opening the issue!

We recently updated the README of podman-bootc to highlight how to run it on Linux. Shall we update the upstream getting started guide as well?

[lulinqing]

Thanks for opening the issue!

We recently updated the README of podman-bootc to highlight how to run it on Linux. Shall we update the upstream getting started guide as well?

Thanks!

BTW can we also simplify podman-bootc installation on RHEL (similar as on Fedora)?
It currently has quite some dependency issues with rhel+epel enabled.

[vrothberg]

BTW can we also simplify podman-bootc installation on RHEL (similar as on Fedora)?

At the moment, the future of podman-bootc is not 100 percent clear. Over time, especially @cgwalters' mind has shifted a bit from podman-bootc to something closer to an SDK.

We want to look into it after summit.

[zdohnal]

@vrothberg I have created PR for Fedora guide https://gitlab.com/fedora/bootc/docs/-/merge_requests/92 .