Mechanism to immidiatly stop container managed by systemd

[NotSoFancyName]

Is it possible to stop quadlet container instantly similar to podman stop <name> -t 0 ?

We tried to solve it with systemctl --user kill --signal=SIGKILL <name>.
However if the container was already in stopping state which was triggered by systemctl --user stop <name> the container freezes in stopping state. This behaviour seems to be expexted as mentioned here

[Luap99]

However if the container was already in stopping state which was triggered by systemctl --user stop the container freezes in stopping state. This behaviour seems to be expexted as mentioned #19629 (comment)

How does that freeze? quadlets have an ExecStopPost= command to remove the container so the state should not matter for that.

Also you can configure the KillSignal=SIGKILL in the service section which should make systemctl stop use that signal if you always want to kill.

[NotSoFancyName]

Container simply stays in the stopping state and does not go away unless I do podman rm -f two times

I have created an issue for that with detailed description

The systemctl --user status gives output like this

× test.service
     Loaded: loaded (/home/vova/.config/containers/systemd/test.container; generated)
    Drop-In: /etc/systemd/user/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: failed (Result: signal) since Tue 2025-07-15 11:22:21 CEST; 53min ago
   Duration: 16.652s
 Invocation: fdec367daf91437fabe74e5f0504efe5
    Process: 2510870 ExecStart=/usr/bin/podman run --name test --cidfile=/run/user/1000/test.cid --replace --rm --cgroups=split --sdnotify=conmon -d alpine sleep 1000 (code=killed, signal=KILL)
    Process: 2511073 ExecStop=/usr/bin/podman rm -v -f -i --cidfile=/run/user/1000/test.cid (code=killed, signal=KILL)
    Process: 2511160 ExecStopPost=/usr/bin/podman rm -v -f -i --cidfile=/run/user/1000/test.cid (code=killed, signal=KILL)
   Main PID: 2510870 (code=killed, signal=KILL)
   Mem peak: 45.8M
        CPU: 306ms

Would it be possible to still somehow remove container immidialty without specifying KillSignal=SIGKILL ?

[Luap99]

I think StopSignal=SIGKILL in [Container] section may be better than KillSignal actually

[NotSoFancyName]

Was answered here