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podman-unshare(1)() podman-unshare(1)()

NAME

podman-unshare - Run a command inside of a modified user namespace

SYNOPSIS

podman unshare [--] [command]

DESCRIPTION

Launches a process (by default, $SHELL) in a new user namespace. The user namespace is configured so that the invoking user's UID and primary GID appear to be UID 0 and GID 0, respectively. Any ranges which match that user and group in /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid are also mapped in as themselves with the help of the newuidmap(1) and newgidmap(1) helpers.

podman unshare is useful for troubleshooting unprivileged operations and for manually clearing storage and other data related to images and containers.

It is also useful if you want to use the podman mount command. If an unprivileged user wants to mount and work with a container, then they need to execute podman unshare. Executing podman mount fails for unprivileged users unless the user is running inside a podman unshare session.

The unshare session defines two environment variables:

  • CONTAINERS_GRAPHROOT: the path to the persistent container's data.
  • CONTAINERS_RUNROOT: the path to the volatile container's data.

EXAMPLE

$ podman unshare id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),65534(nobody)
$ podman unshare cat /proc/self/uid_map /proc/self/gid_map

0 1000 1
1 10000 65536
0 1000 1
1 10000 65536

SEE ALSO

podman(1), podman-mount(1), namespaces(7), newuidmap(1), newgidmap(1), user_namespaces(7)