podman-machine-os-apply(1)

NAME
podman-machine-os-apply - Apply an OCI image to a Podman Machine's OS

SYNOPSIS
podman machine os apply [options] uri [vm]

DESCRIPTION
Apply machine OS changes from an OCI image.

The Podman virtual machine has the capability to rebase itself from the content of an OCI image. podman machine image apply takes an OCI image with container native ostree functionality and rebases itself on that image.

By default, Podman machines on Mac, Linux, and Windows Hyper-V use a customized rpm-ostree based distribution (Fedora CoreOS). Machines based on Microsoft WSL use a customized distribution and cannot be updated with this command.

Note: WSL-based machines are upgradable by using the podman machine ssh <machine_name> command followed by sudo dnf update. This can, however, result in unexpected results in Podman client and server version differences.

The applying of the OCI image is done by a command called bootc and specifically bootc switch. By default, this command takes an OCI registry image reference like quay.io/custom/machine-os:latest. However, bootc also understands references with different transports. At present, Podman will support the following transports:

•   containers-storage

•   oci

•   oci-archive

•   registry

Examples for these transports in URI form are provided below.

Podman machine images are stored as OCI images at quay.io/podman/machine-os. When applying an image using this command, the fully qualified OCI reference name must be used including tag where the tag is the version of Podman that is inside the VM. By default, Podman will attempt to pull only the statement version as itself.

The default machine name is podman-machine-default. If a machine name is not specified as an argument, then the OS changes will be applied to podman-machine-default.

OPTIONS

  --help
Print usage statement.

  --restart
Restart VM after applying changes.

EXAMPLES
Update the default Podman machine to the latest development version of the bootable OCI image.

Note: This may result in having a newer Podman version inside the machine than the client. Unexpected results may occur.

Apply a new custom operating system from an OCI bootable image on quay.
    $ podman machine os apply quay.io/custom/machine-os:latest

Apply a new custom operating system to a specific machine from an OCI bootable image on quay.
    $ podman machine os apply quay.io/custom/machine-os:latest mymachine

Apply a new custom operating system that was pulled or built on your existing machine by the unprivileged user. Note the use of brackets around the path because this command is run by the root user.
    $ podman machine os apply containers-storage:[/home/core/.local/share/containers/storage]localhost/mycustomimage:latest

Apply a new custom operating system that was pulled or built on your existing machine by the privileged user. Note that because a privileged user built or pulled the image, bootc will resolve that users storage and the path is not needed.
    $ podman machine os apply containers-storage:localhost/mycustomimage:latest

Apply a new custom operating system from an OCI archive in tar form.
    $ podman machine os apply oci-archive:/tmp/oci-image.tar

Apply a new custom operating system from an OCI formatted directory.
    $ podman machine os apply oci:/tmp/oci-image/

SEE ALSO
podman(1), podman-machine(1), podman-machine-os(1)

HISTORY
February 2023, Originally compiled by Ashley Cui acui@redhat.com ⟨mailto:acui@redhat.com⟩