This article will walk you through setting up Podman for use in Coder workspaces

Podman is a container engine (similar to Docker) that is compatible with the OCI containers specification. Podman is useful if you'd like an alternative to CVM workspaces or if your Linux kernel doesn't support CVMs.

Please be aware that there are limitations related to running Podman in rootless mode.

1. Install smarter-device-manager and expose the FUSE device through it. To do so, create a file called smarter-device-manager.yaml with the following contents:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     name: smarter-device-manager
     labels:
       name: smarter-device-manager
   
   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: ResourceQuota
   metadata:
     name: smarter-device-manager
     namespace: smarter-device-manager
   spec:
     hard:
       pods: 50
     scopeSelector:
       matchExpressions:
         - operator: In
           scopeName: PriorityClass
           values:
             - system-node-critical
             - system-cluster-critical
   
   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: ConfigMap
   metadata:
     name: smarter-device-manager
     namespace: smarter-device-manager
   data:
     conf.yaml: |+
       - devicematch: ^fuse$
         nummaxdevices: 50
   
   ---
   apiVersion: apps/v1
   kind: DaemonSet
   metadata:
     name: smarter-device-manager
     namespace: smarter-device-manager
     labels:
       name: smarter-device-manager
       role: agent
   spec:
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         name: smarter-device-manager
     updateStrategy:
       type: RollingUpdate
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           name: smarter-device-manager
         annotations:
           node.kubernetes.io/bootstrap-checkpoint: "true"
       spec:
         nodeSelector:
           smarter-device-manager: enabled
         priorityClassName: "system-node-critical"
         hostname: smarter-device-management
         hostNetwork: true
         dnsPolicy: ClusterFirstWithHostNet
         containers:
           - name: smarter-device-manager
             image: registry.gitlab.com/arm-research/smarter/smarter-device-manager:v1.20.7
             imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
             securityContext:
               allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
               capabilities:
                 drop: ["ALL"]
             resources:
               limits:
                 cpu: 100m
                 memory: 15Mi
               requests:
                 cpu: 10m
                 memory: 15Mi
             volumeMounts:
               - name: device-plugin
                 mountPath: /var/lib/kubelet/device-plugins
               - name: dev-dir
                 mountPath: /dev
               - name: sys-dir
                 mountPath: /sys
               - name: config
                 mountPath: /root/config
         volumes:
           - name: device-plugin
             hostPath:
               path: /var/lib/kubelet/device-plugins
           - name: dev-dir
             hostPath:
               path: /dev
           - name: sys-dir
             hostPath:
               path: /sys
           - name: config
             configMap:
               name: smarter-device-manager
         terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
   

   Next, apply the changes to your clusters by running:

   kubectl apply -f ./smarter-device-manager.yaml
   

   The example DaemonSet includes a nodeSelector that constrains the device plugin to nodes with the smarter-device-manager label set to enabled. Label the nodes that will include the FUSE device by using the following command, or remove the nodeSelector from the manifest:

   kubectl get nodes
   kubectl label nodes --all smarter-device-manager=enabled 
   

2. If you haven't already done so for your Coder deployment, enable workspace templates. To do so, go to Manage > Admin > Templates, and set the Enable workspace templates to On. Click Save.

3. Create a workspace configuration file that includes instructions for resource requests and resource limits (the instructions ask the cluster to request the FUSE device for each workspace):

   version: "0.2"
   workspace:
     specs:
       kubernetes:
         resource-requests:
           policy: write
           value:
             smarter-devices/fuse: "1"
         resource-limits:
           policy: write
           value:
             smarter-devices/fuse: "1"
   

   A complete workspace template might look something like

   version: "0.2"
   workspace:
     configure:
       start:
         policy: write
     dev-urls:
       policy: write
     specs:
       aws-ec2-docker:
         container-image:
           policy: write
         disk-size:
           policy: write
         instance-type:
           policy: write
       docker:
         container-based-vm:
           policy: write
         image:
           policy: write
       kubernetes:
         annotations:
           policy: read
         container-based-vm:
           policy: write
         cpu:
           policy: write
         disk:
           policy: write
         env:
           policy: write
         gpu-count:
           policy: write
         image:
           policy: write
         labels:
           policy: read
         memory:
           policy: write
         node-selector:
           policy: read
         privileged:
           policy: read
         resource-requests:
           policy: write
           value:
             smarter-devices/fuse: "1"
         resource-limits:
           policy: write
           value:
             smarter-devices/fuse: "1"
         runtime-class-name:
           policy: read
         tolerations:
           policy: read
   

4. In the Coder UI, navigate to Manage > Admin > Templates if you haven't already done so. Under template policy, upload the configuration file you created in the previous step. Click Save.

   With the above template policy, all workspaces will acquire a FUSE device, which enables Podman to operate in rootless mode.

For systems running AppArmor and SELinux

Running Podman in rootless mode requires a FUSE device to implement the overlay filesystem (fuse-overlayfs) in unprivileged mode. The following directions work by mounting the FUSE device from the host into workspace containers, which conflicts with the isolation provided by SELinux and AppArmor.

For systems running AppArmor (typically Debian- and Ubuntu-derived systems), please disable AppArmor before proceeding.

For systems running SELinux (typically Fedora-, CentOS-, and Red Hat-based systems), please disable SELinux or set it to permissive mode.

Testing

At this point, you can create a workspace that leverages Podman. If you need a sample Podman image, you can obtain one from RedHat. When using this image, switch to the unprivileged podman user before creating containers to ensure that podman runs in rootless mode.