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containerssystemdpodman

Login into server causes podman containers to restarts


It seems that anytime I log into my homeserver, podman containers are restarting:

❯ ssh [email protected]
[email protected]'s password:
Web console: https://homeserver.localdomain:9090/ or https://192.168.1.116:9090/

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Last login: Wed Nov 22 21:38:24 2023 from ::ffff:192.168.1.111
[podman@homeserver ~]$ podman ps
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                                                 COMMAND               CREATED        STATUS                   PORTS                                                                                                                                             NAMES
6a4b5a1ca375  docker.io/louislam/uptime-kuma:latest                 node server/serve...  2 seconds ago  Up 3 seconds (starting)  0.0.0.0:3001->3001/tcp                                                                                                                            uptime-kuma
3b97cda03874  lscr.io/linuxserver/unifi-network-application:latest                        2 seconds ago  Up 2 seconds (starting)  0.0.0.0:8080->8080/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8443->8443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8843->8843/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8880->8880/tcp, 0.0.0.0:3478->3478/udp, 0.0.0.0:10001->10001/udp  systemd-unifi_network_application
a6b35bd7ccd7  docker.io/pihole/pihole:latest                                              2 seconds ago  Up 3 seconds (starting)  0.0.0.0:53->53/udp, 0.0.0.0:53->53/tcp, 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp                                                                                        systemd-pihole
e45ca3fde4bf  docker.io/library/mongo:4.4.25                        mongod                2 seconds ago  Up 2 seconds (starting)  0.0.0.0:27017->27017/tcp                                                                                                                          unifi_mongodb

The same happened yesterday at about 17:15 when I logged in via cockpit: all containers were created and restarted immediately after my login.

I'm using quadlet files to create systemd services and this is an example file:

[Unit]
Description=UniFi MongoDB
After=local-fs.target

[Container]
Image=docker.io/mongo:4.4.25
ContainerName=unifi_mongodb
Environment=MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root
Secret=unifi_mongodb_root_password,type=env,target=MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD
Network=unifi_network_application.network
Volume=unifi_mongodb_data:/data/db
PublishPort=27017:27017
HealthCmd=CMD-SHELL mongo --eval 'db.runCommand({ping:1})'
HealthInterval=30s
HealthRetries=2
HealthOnFailure=kill

[Service]
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target default.target

I'm not sure if the latter is misconfigured or I'm missing something else.


Solution

  • Your containers don't restart, they just start at login time, because they stop when you log out. (Looking at system logs with journalctl -b will probably reveal this.)

    You're using quadlet to generate user services, not system services (hence systemctl --user), and those are managed by a "user service manager" instance that automatically starts on user login and stops on logout.

    Use loginctl enable-linger $USER to have your user service manager start on boot and remain running until system shutdown.