Knowledgebase

Symptoms

Attempting to install an ea-podman container for an account returns the following error.

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/ea-podman install ea-redis62
Can't exec "podman": No such file or directory at /opt/cpanel/ea-podman/lib/ea_podman/util.pm line 90.
Failed to create container

It's also possible to receive additional errors.

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/ea-podman install ea-redis62
Cannot open “/etc/cpanel/ea4/ea4-metainfo.json”: No such file or directory at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/JSON.pm line 272.

Description

On cPanel servers, containers via ea-podman can be used to install a few software packages independently and separately from the rest of the server. These applications will also run as the user account.

• Redis
• Memcached
• Tomcat

The podman software doesn't usually run from inside a jail like CageFS and will return errors. To run podman containers inside of CageFS, you must configure a few additional settings and files on the server.

Workaround

Note: The server administrator is needed to perform these steps.

1. Create the systemctl wrapper file at path "/usr/local/bin/systemctl".

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/$(id -u)/bus 
   exec /usr/bin/systemctl "$@"

2. Make the wrapper executable.

   chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/systemctl

3. Create the proxyexec commands config file for podman and the wrapper at path "/etc/cagefs/ea-podman.proxy.commands".

   PODMAN=/usr/bin/podman
   SYSTEMCTL=/usr/local/bin/systemctl

4. Create the ea-podman CageFS configuration file at path "/etc/cagefs/conf.d/ea-podman.cfg".

   [ea-podman] 
   paths=/usr/bin/podman, /usr/local/bin/systemctl, /etc/cpanel/ea4/ea4-metainfo.json

5. Update the CageFS for the config changes to be applied to the current CageFS mounts.

   cagefsctl --force-update

6. Enable loginctl linger on the account to ensure the container remains persistent for users who log out.

   loginctl enable-linger <username>

7. At this point, you can log in to SSH as the user account and install a container, such as "ea-redis".

   su - <username>

   /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/ea-podman install ea-redis62

You can find additional information on this topic in the CloudLinux knowledge base.

 ea-podman in CageFS