[Feature]: Android support

[octavei]

Feature request description

I want to use podman in an Android environment. But I can't find the tutorial. It's great if podman is friendly enough to support use in an Android environment.

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[vrothberg]

Thanks for reaching out, @octavei. Podman is technically capable of running on Android but I do not know of an effort in that space yet.

Cc: @containers/podman-maintainers

[rhatdan]

I thought I remembered someone from community playing with it, but I can not find it now.

[octavei]

I thought I remembered someone from community playing with it, but I can not find it now.

If you can help find this project or tutorial, I would really appreciate it. I now need to run containers in my phone, but I don't really know much about podman's technical implementation.

[0xF4CED]

The major roadblock is that typically phone kernels don't have proper support for cgroups, namespaces, overlayfs etc. So a patched custom kernel would be required to run podman natively, severely limiting availability.

IMO a more viable approach would be to use a minimal vm/kernel with unprivileged qemu for legacy devices (probably too slow) and rootless pKVM for android 13+ devices like the Pixel 7. (related but outdated info)
The closest implementation of this approach, I have seen, is @kdrag0n's Nestbox (closed source & not using podman).
Though that's probably beyond the scope of this project.

You could tinker with qemu in termux for now.

[github-actions[bot]]

A friendly reminder that this issue had no activity for 30 days.

[rhatdan]

I think this is more of a discussion than an issue.

[Muktee]

Question: does Podman require root (sudo/superuser) access ?
Docker does require root access, & this makes it impossible to install on a non-rooted phone.

[jairov4]

I was able to run containers in Android using podman.
There are multiple caveats but it is possible, I have documented the process here https://github.com/jairov4/podman-android-xiaomi-dipper

I used a custom kernel (but stock ROM) with minimum changes.
However, I didnt achieve to have runc running using cgroups.
Instead of that, I used crun with cgroups=disabled and used vfs instead of overlay

[gmankab]

any guide for non-rooted devices?

[shawn111]

For non-root termux, maybe podman machine is good enough.

There are docker and containerd in termux-packages. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/tree/master/root-packages/docker
But podman is not been there yet.