Running containers with podman and systemd

[ikke-t]

Hi,

as I haven't used docker in years I configured Librebooking provided container under podman. Podman is open source container tool which was released years ago, and has been used for years already to go past docker.

I also configured it to be used with quadlets, the files that describe pods/containers to systemd. See more options here.

This is a simple example to implement what development examples have at docker documentation for LB. For further configuration see the above systemd file format for help. Like using secrets etc. For any librebooking options, just follow the normal guides.

Since I run this with user, not root, and the container user is not root, we need to use high ports. The offered docker file is using low port for apache (80), we need to replace apache config to use higher ports (8080). That's a little extra here.

So that said, let's go:

Create network file:

cat >> ~/.config/containers/systemd/librebooking.network<<EOF 
[Unit]
Description=Librebooking Network

[Network]
Subnet=192.168.30.0/24
Gateway=192.168.30.1
Label=app=librebooking
EOF

create volume for DB

cat >> ~/.config/containers/systemd/mariadb-lb.volume<<EOF
[Volume]
Driver=local
Label=app=librebooking
EOF

Create DB container conf

cat >> ~/.config/containers/systemd/mariadb-lb.container<<EOF
[Unit]
Description=MariaDB container

[Container]
Image=docker.io/linuxserver/mariadb:10.6.13
Environment=MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=db_root_pwd
Environment=MYSQL_USER=lb
Environment=MYSQL_PASSWORD=lb-test
Environment=MYSQL_DATABASE=db
Environment=PUID=1000
Environment=PGID=1000
Volume=mariadb-lb.volume:/config:U
Network=librebooking.network
PublishPort=3306:3306
Label=app=librebooking

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
EOF

Create Images Volume

cat >> ~/.config/containers/systemd/lb-images.volume<<EOF
[Volume]
Driver=local
Label=app=librebooking
EOF

Create Reservations Volume

cat >> ~/.config/containers/systemd/lb-reservation.volume<<EOF
[Volume]
Driver=local
Label=app=librebooking
EOF

Create LB container file

cat >> ~/.config/containers/systemd/lb.container<<EOF
[Unit]
Description=Librebooking container
Requires=mariadb-lb.service
After=mariadb-lb.service
 
[Container]
HostName=librebooking
Image=docker.io/librebooking/librebooking:develop
Network=librebooking.network
Environment=LB_DATABASE_NAME=db
Environment=LB_DATABASE_USER=lb
Environment=LB_DATABASE_PASSWORD=lb-test
Environment=LB_DATABASE_HOSTSPEC=systemd-mariadb-lb
Environment=LB_INSTALL_PASSWORD=installme
Environment=LB_LOGGING_FOLDER=/var/log/librebooking
Environment=LB_LOGGING_LEVEL=DEBUG
Environment=LB_LOGGING_SQL=false
Environment=LB_DEFAULT_TIMEZONE=Europe/Helsinki
PublishPort=8080:8080
Label=app=librebooking
Volume=lb-images.volume:/var/www/html/Web/uploads/images
Volume=lb-reservation.volume:/var/www/html/Web/uploads/reservation
Volume=%h/librebooking-conf:/config:U
# Volume=%h/librebooking-conf:/config
Volume=%h/lb-000-default.conf:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:z
Volume=%h/lb-ports.conf:/etc/apache2/ports.conf:z
# User=1000:1000


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
EOF

Create ports.conf to override apache port

cat >> ~/lb-ports.conf<<EOF
# If you just change the port or add more ports here, you will likely also
# have to change the VirtualHost statement in
# /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

Listen 8080

<IfModule ssl_module>
        Listen 8443
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_gnutls.c>
        Listen 8443
</IfModule>
EOF

Create virtual server conf to override apache port

cat >> ~/ lb-000-default.conf<<EOF
<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
EOF

Create permanent conf dir for LB

mkdir ~/librebooking-conf

Start the services

Now we have all the config files done for systemd. Next we reload the daemon, and start the services:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user start mariadb-lb
systemctl --user start lb

If you want to see the logs, you can use podman logs ... or use journalctl --user -u lb. You can also modify the conf file in ~/librebooking-conf/config.php, and restart the service with systemctl --user restart lb.

Connect to Librebooking

At this point the system is running at http::8080.

Alternatively using just podman

You could just quickly also just run plain podman, but remember this is not persistent:

podman network create librebooking --subnet 192.168.30.0/24 --gateway=192.168.30.1
podman volume create db_conf
podman volume create lb-images
podman volume create lb-reservations

podman run -d --name systemd-mariadb-lb \
  --replace \
  --network systemd-librebooking \
  -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=db_root_pwd \
  -e TZ=Europe/Helsinki \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e MYSQL_DATABASE=db \
  -e MYSQL_USER=lb \
  -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=lb-test \
  -v db_conf:/config:U \
  -p 3306:3306 \
  docker.io/linuxserver/mariadb:10.6.13

podman run --name lb --replace \
  --detach \
  --hostname librebooking \
  --network librebooking \
  -e LB_DATABASE_NAME=db \
  -e LB_DATABASE_USER=lb \
  -e LB_DATABASE_PASSWORD=lb-test \
  -e LB_DATABASE_HOSTSPEC=systemd-mariadb-lb \
  -e LB_INSTALL_PASSWORD=installme \
  -e LB_LOGGING_FOLDER=/var/log/librebooking \
  -e LB_LOGGING_LEVEL=DEBUG \
  -e LB_LOGGING_SQL=false \
  -e LB_DEFAULT_TIMEZONE=Europe/Helsinki \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  --volume lb-images.volume:/var/www/html/Web/uploads/images \
  --volume lb-reservation.volume:/var/www/html/Web/uploads/reservation \
  --volume ~/librebooking-conf:/config:U \
  --volume ~/lb-000-default.conf:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:z \
  --volume ~/lb-ports.conf:/etc/apache2/ports.conf:z \
  docker.io/librebooking/librebooking:develop

Have fun with LB in podman!

I did the config on Fedora 43.

[ikke-t]

I close now this thread as there is now enhanced image and no port trickery is needed. There is up to date instructions in container examples: https://github.com/LibreBooking/docker/tree/master/.examples/podman