Podman stop command removes container

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I am having a container say "hello" which I am trying to start, stop and restart using podman commands.

[ podman version : 3.3.1 on RHEL ]

I am running this commands:

  1. podman start hello

  2. podman stop hello

  3. podman start hello

The third command gives error as:

Error: no container with name or ID "hello" found: no such container

I ran podman ps and podman ps -a to check running and available containers resp. But none displays the "hello" container.

I found out this link of bug someone raised earlier on github, though I am not using "--rm" command and still getting this issue.

Podman stop removes the container

Anything am I missing here or any more info needs to be added to this question?

podman
2 Answers

Containers are not automatically removed when you stop them unless you create the container using the --rm flag.

You didn't specify how you created your hello container. When creating it, are you passing --rm to podman create? The behavior you are describing corresponds to the scenario of creating a container with the --rm flag.

AutoRemove

If you want to know whether the host will automatically remove a given container after exiting, then check the AutoRemove boolean field of the HostConfig object:

podman inspect --format \
 'automatically remove: {{if .HostConfig.AutoRemove}}yes{{else}}no{{end}}' \
 hello

This will display either automatically remove: yes or automatically remove: no.

Example with --rm

We create the following container hello with the --rm flag:

podman create --rm --name hello alpine sleep 5000

We can check with podman ps -a that the hello container exists and has the status created.

We can also check that the AutoRemove field is set to true:

$ podman inspect --format '{{.HostConfig.AutoRemove}}' hello
true

Then, we start the container with podman start hello. You can check that the container is running with podman ps.

If you now stop the container with podman stop hello, you won't be able to see it any longer on the container list provided by podman ps -a. That is, the container has been automatically removed.

Example without --rm

If we repeat the same process, but without the --rm flag at the moment of creating the hello container, the container won't be automatically removed when it is stopped this time:

  1. Create the container without passing --rm:

    podman create --name hello alpine sleep 5000

    Check that the AutoRemove field is set to false:

    $ podman inspect --format '{{.HostConfig.AutoRemove}}' hello
false

  2. Start it:

    podman start hello

  3. Stop it:

    podman stop hello

    You can check now with podman ps -a that the container still exists.

  4. Restart it:

    podman restart hello

This time, if you want to remove the container, you need to manually do it:

podman container rm -f hello
user_80126460

I will write what command worked for me. (Thanks to @ネロク for the helpful command)

In my case I already have container present in the machine. The only way to find how it run was with command

podman inspect --format '{{.HostConfig.AutoRemove}}' hello

Output:

true --> container was run with --rm parameter podman run -d --rm hello

false--> container was run without --rm paramter podman run -d hello

For first case, when you'll stop container, it'll be actually removed from your machine. And thus while trying to start container after stopping it will give error,

 podman start hello
 Error: no container with name or ID "hello" found: no such container
user_107898740
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