I’m moving to a new machine soon and want to re-evaluate some security practices while I’m doing it. My current server is debian with all apps containerized in docker with root. I’d like to harden some stuff, especially vaultwarden but I’m concerned about transitioning to podman while using complex docker setups like nextcloud-aio. Do you have experience hardening your containers by switching? Is it worth it? How long is a piece of string?

  • herrfrutti@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    1 month ago

    I’m running podman and podman-compose with no problem. And I’m happy. At first I was confused by the uid and gid mapping the containers have, but you’ll get used to it.

    This are some notes I took, please don’t take all of it for the right choice.

    Podman-Stuff

    https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/main/docs/tutorials/rootless_tutorial.md

    storage.conf

    To use the fuse-overlay driver, the storage must be configured:

    .config/containers/storage.conf

    [storage]
  driver = "overlay"
  runroot = "/run/user/1000"
  graphroot = "/home/<user>/.local/share/containers/storage"
  [storage.options]
    mount_program = "/usr/bin/fuse-overlayfs"

    Lingering (running services without login / after logout)

    https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/12001

    https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/462845/how-to-apply-lingering-immedeately#462867

    sudo loginctl enable-linger <user>
    • bigdickdonkey@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      Do you need to set lingering for all container users you set up? Does it restart all services in your compose files without issue?

      • herrfrutti@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        Yes all users that have containers running, that should keep running need lingering.

        The Services do not restart themself. I have cronjob that executes podman start --all at reboot for my “podman user”.

  • asap@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    1 month ago

    I switched and was very glad to do so. You increase your security and so far I haven’t seen any downside. Every container I’ve tried has worked without issues, even complex ones.

    • ilmagico@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      Was this with podman or rootless docker?

      I also would like to switch to rootless, I have some experience with podman and, while I generally like it, it’s not 100% compatible with (rootful) docker, and can have performance issues if you’re not careful, especiallt with certain file systems like btrfs. I wonder if rootless docker is now better than podman, or preferred for some other reason.

      • asap@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        1 month ago

        Rootless Podman :) It requires you to learn a little bit of new syntax, for example, the way you mount volumes and pass environment variables can be slightly different, but there’s nothing that hasn’t worked for me.

        I’m using this on uBlue uCore, which I would also strongly recommend for security reasons.

        • bigdickdonkey@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          Can you expand on why you chose uCore? I was considering CoreOS until just now and the idea of setting up ignition config serving seems overkill for running only one server at home. ignition is still required the same way as CoreOS

          • asap@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 month ago

            Mainly for security. I was originally looking at CoreOS but I liked the additional improvements by the UBlue team. Since I only want it to run containers, it is a huge security benefit to be immutable and designed specifically for that workflow.

            The Ignition file is super easy to do, even for just one server (substitute docker for podman depending which you have):

            Take a copy of the UCore butane file:

            https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore/blob/main/examples/ucore-autorebase.butane

            Update it with your SSH public key and a password hash by using this command:

            # Get a password hash
podman run -ti --rm quay.io/coreos/mkpasswd --method=yescrypt

            Then host the butane file in a temporary local webserver:

            # Convert Butane file to Ignition file
podman run -i --rm quay.io/coreos/butane:release --pretty --strict < ucore-autorebase.butane > ignition.ign

# Serve the Igition file using a temp webserver
podman run -p 5080:80 -v "$PWD":/var/www/html php:7.2-apache

            During UCore setup, type in the address of the hosted file, e.g. http://your_ip_addr:5080/ignition.ign

            That’s it - UCore configures everything else during setup.___

  • UnityDevice@startrek.websiteEnglish
    7·
    1 month ago

    Podman not because of security but because of quadlets (systemd integration). Makes setting up and managing container services a breeze.

    • Asparagus0098@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      Yeah quadlets are pretty cool. I have them organized into folders for each pod. podman auto-update is also another pretty nice feature. I don’t use the systemd timer for auto-update. Instead I just do podman auto-update --dry-run to check for updates and update my quadlet files and configs if any changes are required then I run the updates with podman auto-update.

  • oranki@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    1 month ago

    I’m very much biased towards Podman, but from what I understand rootless Docker is a bit of an afterthought, while Podman has been developed from the ground up with rootless in mind. That should be reason enough.

    The very few things Docker can do that Podman struggles a bit with are stuff that usually involves mounting the Docker socket in the container or other stupid things. Since you care about security, you wouldn’t do that anyway. Not to mention there’s also rootful Podman, when you need that level of access.

    I’d recommend an RPM-based distro with Podman, the few times I’ve tried Podman on a deb distro, there’s always been something wonky. It’s been a while, though.

    • cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      5·
      1 month ago

      Podman actually run fine on Debian 12. Though the packaged version is a bit old. Does not support podman compose command. Though podman-compose works.

    • bigdickdonkey@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      I’m thinking about an immutable OS with podman support first and foremost. Would you recommend Fedora CoreOS?

      • oranki@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        It’s a really solid combo, but if you’re not familiar with CoreOS I wouldn’t change both at once. Meaning migrate the services to Podman first, then switch the OS. I’ve meant to switch from Alma 9 to CoreOS a long time, but haven’t found the time.

        I noticed you run Nextcloud AIO, just so you know, that’s one of those “mount the docker socket” monstrosities. I’d look into switching to the community NC image and separate containers managed yourself. AIO is easy, but if someone gets shell to the NC container, it’s basically giving root to your host.

        Either way, you’re going to have trouble running AIO with Podman.

    • matcha_addict@lemy.lolEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      Does Podman work well when you have multiple rootless containers that you want to communicate securely in a least-privilege configuration (each container only has access to what it needs)? That is the one thing I couldn’t figure out how to do well with Podman.

      • Asparagus0098@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        Do you mean networking between them? There’s two ways of networking between containers. One of them is to create a custom network for a set of containers that you want to connect between each other. Then you can access other containers in that network using their name and port number like so

        container_name:1234

        Note: DNS is disabled in the default network by default so you can’t access other containers by their name if using it. You need to create a new network for it to work.

        Another way is to group them together with a pod. Then you can access other services in that same pod using localhost like so

        localhost:1234

        Personally in my current setup I’m using both pods and seperate networks for each of them. The reason is I use traefik and I don’t want all of my containers in a single network along with traefik. So I just made a seperate network for each of my pods and give traefik access to that network. As an example here’s my komga setup:

        I have komga and komf running in a single pod with a network called komga assigned to the pod. So now I can communicate between komga and komf using localhost. I also added traefik to the komga network so that I can reverse proxy my komga instance.

      • cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Yes, you can easily do that. Set the container name and make them on the same network. Used caddy and whole bunch of Selfhostable services with it and I reverse proxy as

        container_name:port
  • brewery@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 month ago

    Not sure if it makes a difference and not quite your question but I’ve just switched away from nextcloud-aio to just having my own docker compose, so I have better control and know what’s going on more. I always found it funny and when installing on a new VPS decided to try. It was surprisingly straightforward and Ive been able to install everything I need.

    Let me know if my docker compose would help. I still need to add the backup solution but it’s going to be straightforward as well.

    • bigdickdonkey@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      21·
      1 month ago

      I would love to see your compose file. I already have to run special steps on my nextcloud-aio to use it with a reverse proxy so I’m interested in moving away from it.

      • brewery@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        pastebin.com/DiHX2vg2

        Hopefully this works and you can see the compose file. I’ve put a few things in [square brackets] to hide some stuff, probably overly cautiously. I have an external network linked to NPM and in that, I use nextcloud-server for IP address and 80 for the port (it’s the inside container port, not 8080 on the system - that took me a long time to figure out!). Add a .env file with everything referenced in the compose file, then (hopefully!) Away you go

        • bigdickdonkey@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          2·
          1 month ago

          Thanks for sharing this! It also took me a while to understand the difference between the Expose dockerfile command and the --publish cli command

  • cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    1 month ago

    One of the main reason I switched to podman was its compatibility with firewalld. Haven’t used rootless docker, but podman and podman-compose gets the job done for me.

  • vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 month ago

    Podman

    • rootless by default
    • daemonless
    • integration with systemd, made even easier by podman-generate-systemd
    • no third-party APT repository required, follows the same lifecycle as my LTS (Debian) distro
    • podman and docker command-line are 100% compatible for my use cases
  • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    Can’t help with much of this but I think I can resolve the last question for you, since I don’t see anyone else trying.

    How long is a piece of string?

    Exactly twice as long as half of its length.

  • thesmokingman@programming.devEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    As long as you’re on Linux, podman is superior and will do all of the things you’re asking about. If you need to also support Windows or Mac, Docker is the only thing that will work (although people have told me Rancher isn’t bad now for a couple of years).

      • thesmokingman@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        And as long as you don’t need simple access to most features such as volumes. The podman implementation on not Linux leaves quite a bit to be desired for anyone trying to do more than just run a binary wrapped in a container. I’m not throwing shade because it’s FOSS and anything is better than Docker. Only Docker will work for a production-capable dev environment on not Linux unless podman’s development has exponentially increased in the last year since I tried to move a shop to podman on not Linux.

  • Tinkerer@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    I’m actually in the process of switching over from docker to podman. Its definitely a learning curve, ie. Setting up systems integration etc.

    I do love it but its been a bit of a pain, for instance I’m still trying to figure out the errors I’m getting when trying to deploy my matrix and vikunja containers, I’m getting permission errors and can’t find dB errors. I k ow little about podman right now but I would definitely recommend it since it is open source and runs rootless by deafult.