podman Command in Linux: Run Containers, Images & Pods (RHEL/Fedora/Rocky)

When you only need a quick command from an image — no leftover container — combine run with --rm.

Run the command:

podman run --rm quay.io/rockylinux/rockylinux:9 echo hello-podman

Sample output:

hello-podman

Podman pulled the image if needed, started a container, ran echo, printed the line, and removed the container because of --rm.

Use -d for background workloads and -p to publish a container port on the host.

Run the command:

podman run -d --name glc-web -p 18080:80 docker.io/library/nginx:alpine

Sample output:

5f9d3730e1330707ee9e6ad71c6627b84d7eb38b3357068a90fbb175e77b92be

Confirm the mapping and that something is listening:

podman port glc-web
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1:18080/

Sample output:

80/tcp -> 0.0.0.0:18080
HTTP 200

80/tcp -> 0.0.0.0:18080 means host port 18080 forwards to port 80 inside the container. Clean up with podman stop glc-web && podman rm glc-web when you are done.

exec attaches a new process to an existing container — useful for debugging without restarting the workload.

Start a long-running container:

podman run -d --name glc-exec quay.io/rockylinux/rockylinux:9 sleep 3600

Run a command inside it:

podman exec glc-exec cat /etc/redhat-release

Sample output:

Rocky Linux release 9.8 (Blue Onyx)

The release file comes from the image, not necessarily your host OS. Stop and remove the test container when finished.

Named volumes survive container removal — handy for databases and application data.

Run the command:

podman run --rm -v glc-data:/data quay.io/rockylinux/rockylinux:9 sh -c 'echo data > /data/test.txt && cat /data/test.txt'

Sample output:

data

Named volumes survive container removal. Remove the test volume with podman volume rm glc-data. For SELinux relabeling of host paths, see the bind-mount row in the quick-reference table (-v /host/path:/ctr/path:Z).

create builds the container object; start runs it. Some admins prefer this in scripts over a single run.

Run the commands:

podman create --name glc-create quay.io/rockylinux/rockylinux:9 sleep 600

Sample output:

c19cbefd6e190c1f29f3ed69d065cd5a0d854569cfbb2cbbea38da162b403bf2

Start and verify:

podman start glc-create
podman ps --filter name=glc-create --format '{{.Names}} {{.Status}}'

Sample output:

glc-create Up 2 seconds

Remove the test container with podman rm -f glc-create.

logs shows stdout/stderr; stats gives a CPU and memory snapshot.

Run the commands:

podman logs glc-create 2>&1 | head -3
podman stats --no-stream glc-create

Sample output:

ID            NAME        CPU %       MEM USAGE / LIMIT  MEM %       NET IO       BLOCK IO    PIDS
c19cbefd6e19  glc-create  11.11%      385kB / 4.099GB    0.01%       536B / 132B  0B / 0B     1

An empty logs line is normal for a sleep container. Use podman logs -f to follow output from services that print to stdout.

Pull once, run many times — Podman stores images in local storage.

Run the commands:

podman pull quay.io/rockylinux/rockylinux:9
podman images --format '{{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}}  {{.Size}}'

Sample output:

quay.io/rockylinux/rockylinux:9  244 MB

Use podman image prune to drop unused layers when disk space is tight.

Before pruning, check what Podman is holding on disk.

Run the command:

podman system df

Sample output:

TYPE           TOTAL       ACTIVE      SIZE        RECLAIMABLE
Images         1           1           243.7MB     0B (0%)
Containers     0           0           0B          0B (0%)
Local Volumes  0           0           0B          0B (0%)

RECLAIMABLE shows space you could free with podman system prune or targeted image / volume prune commands.

podman info is the first command when rootless mode, cgroup driver, or registry auth misbehaves.

Run the command:

podman info 2>&1 | head -20

Sample output:

host:
  arch: amd64
  buildahVersion: 1.43.1
  cgroupControllers:
  - cpuset
  - cpu
  - io
  - memory
  ...
  cgroupManager: systemd
  cgroupVersion: v2
  conmon:
    package: conmon-2.2.1-2.el10.x86_64
    path: /usr/bin/conmon

Look for cgroupManager: systemd and cgroupVersion: v2 on current RHEL-family releases. Rootless users should see a graph root under their home directory further down the output.