Using Podman on Windows Server 2022

[userid0x0]

Hi,
I browsed the Internet for a while and did not find a clear answer. We are using Windows Server 2022 and want to run Linux Containers on this machine using podman. Is this supported?
We succeeded using WSL2 on this machine, I furthermore found this thread
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/itops-talk-blog/using-wsl-2-on-windows-server-2022-to-run-linux-containers/ba-p/3624745
that it's possible to run docker within WSL2. If I am not wrong thats exactly how podman works (under the hood) on Windows 10. I tried the podman 3.4.1 installer which fails when trying to exchange the SSH keys while podman machine init.
If I see it correct it fails in

• podman/pkg/machine/wsl/machine.go

  Line 392 in ce504bb

  if err = createKeys(v, dist, sshDir); err != nil {

• podman/pkg/machine/wsl/machine.go

  Line 524 in ce504bb

  key, err := wslCreateKeys(sshDir, v.Name, dist)

• podman/pkg/machine/wsl/machine.go

  Line 916 in ce504bb

  func wslCreateKeys(sshDir string, name string, dist string) (string, error) {

• podman/pkg/machine/keys.go

  Line 36 in ce504bb

  func CreateSSHKeysPrefix(dir string, file string, passThru bool, skipExisting bool, prefix ...string) (string, error) {

• podman/pkg/machine/keys.go

  Line 77 in ce504bb

  func generatekeysPrefix(dir string, file string, passThru bool, prefix ...string) error {

because the data exchange between WSL2 and Windows is based on the fact that the working directory opens up on WSL side (is mounted on /mnt/c/Users/<...>/...). Unfortunately the user folders are directory junctions (symlinks) to Volumes (no idea what this is) and are thus inaccessible from WSL.

C:\Users>dir c:\Users
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is ????-????

 Directory of c:\Users

23/01/2023  17:29    <DIR>          .
??/??/????  ??:??    <DIR>          Administrator.???
...
23/01/2023  ??:??    <JUNCTION>     ame???? [\??\Volume{????????-????-????-????-????????????}\]
....

[userid0x0]

A little update. I succeeded to use podman within a Debian WSL2 machine on Windows Server 2022.
I had to use the /root/bootstrap trick

podman/pkg/machine/wsl/machine.go

Line 71 in ce504bb

const bootstrap = `#!/bin/bash

and started WSL via wsl -u root -d Debian /root/bootstrap

It would be really great to see that podman can be controlled from podman.exe as well.

[baude]

There is a nice podman.exe that performs the install and setup of things automatically. Did you try the downloads from here

[userid0x0]

Hi @baude,
as I tried to say the Podman Windows based initialization fails. I then tried to crosscheck if I am able to run podman within WSL2 (without the windows part). I will create a Issue lateron as I found the rootcause for the failing podman.exe machine init and a workaround.

[userid0x0]

I opened up a ticket #17209