podman-network(1) General Commands Manual podman-network(1)

podman-network - Manage Podman networks

podman network subcommand

The network command manages networks for Podman.

Podman supports two network backends Netavark and CNI. Netavark is the default network backend and was added in Podman version 4.0. CNI is deprecated and will be removed in the next major Podman version 5.0, in preference of Netavark. To configure the network backend use the network_backend key under the [Network] in containers.conf(5). New systems use netavark by default, to check what backend is used run podman info --format {{.Host.NetworkBackend}}.

All network commands work for both backends but CNI and Netavark use different config files so networks have to be created again after a backend change.

Command Man Page Description
connect podman-network-connect(1) Connect a container to a network
create podman-network-create(1) Create a Podman network
disconnect podman-network-disconnect(1) Disconnect a container from a network
exists podman-network-exists(1) Check if the given network exists
inspect podman-network-inspect(1) Display the network configuration for one or more networks
ls podman-network-ls(1) Display a summary of networks
prune podman-network-prune(1) Remove all unused networks
reload podman-network-reload(1) Reload network configuration for containers
rm podman-network-rm(1) Remove one or more networks
update podman-network-update(1) Update an existing Podman network

Podman requires specific default IPs and, thus, network subnets. The default values used by Podman can be modified in the containers.conf(5) file.

The default bridge network (called podman) uses 10.88.0.0/16 as a subnet. When Podman runs as root, the podman network is used as default. It is the same as adding the option --network bridge or --network podman. This subnet can be changed in containers.conf(5) under the [network] section. Set the default_subnet to any subnet that is free in the environment. The name of the default network can also be changed from podman to another name using the default network key. Note that this is only done when no containers are running.

Pasta by default performs no Network Address Translation (NAT) and copies the IPs from your main interface into the container namespace. If pasta cannot find an interface with the default route, it will select an interface if there is only one interface with a valid route. If you do not have a default route and several interfaces have defined routes, pasta will be unable to figure out the correct interface and it will fail to start. To specify the interface, use -i option to pasta. A default set of pasta options can be set in containers.conf(5) under the [network] section with the pasta_options key.

The default rootless networking tool can be selected in containers.conf(5) under the [network] section with default_rootless_network_cmd, which can be set to pasta (default) or slirp4netns.

Slirp4nents uses 10.0.2.0/24 for its default network. This can also be changed in containers.conf(5) but under the [engine] section. Use the network_cmd_options key and add ["cidr=X.X.X.X/24"] as a value. Note that slirp4netns needs a network prefix size between 1 and 25. This option accepts an array, so more options can be added in a comma-separated string as described on the podman-network-create(1) man page. To change the CIDR for just one container, specify it on the cli using the --network option like this: --network slirp4netns:cidr=192.168.1.0/24.

When a new network is created with a podman network create command, and no subnet is given with the --subnet option, Podman starts picking a free subnet from 10.89.0.0/24 to 10.255.255.0/24. Use the default_subnet_pools option under the [network] section in containers.conf(5) to change the range and/or size that is assigned by default.

podman(1), podman-network-create(1), containers.conf(5)