Expose host .sock/named pipe of the podman machine through a podman command

[benoitf]

Is this a BUG REPORT or FEATURE REQUEST? (leave only one on its own line)

/kind feature

Today, we have a message when starting a podman machine with the path to the 'host socket'
like

API forwarding listening on: $HOME/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/my-machine/podman.sock

But then I'm unable to find the path of this socket through a podman command

We may assume socket could be in $HOME/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/<name-of-the-machine> but for example on Windows we remove podman from the machine name for the name of the named pipe so it's making errorprone the guess on the client side.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Start a podman machine

2. Now try with a command to get that path

For example I tried podman machine inspect and podman machine list --format json but none of these commands were reporting the socket.

Describe the results you received:
No command is showing that socket path

Describe the results you expected:

A command should expose it

Additional information you deem important (e.g. issue happens only occasionally):

Output of podman version:

current main branch

Output of podman info --debug:

(paste your output here)

Package info (e.g. output of rpm -q podman or apt list podman):

(paste your output here)

Have you tested with the latest version of Podman and have you checked the Podman Troubleshooting Guide? (https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/main/troubleshooting.md)

Yes/No

Additional environment details (AWS, VirtualBox, physical, etc.):

cc @n1hility

[vrothberg]

@baude @ashley-cui @jwhonce PTAL

[baude]

we are working on this ... there is no easy button here. @benoitf wants podman to tell where the socket should go, and podman devs want podman-desktop to tell us where to put the socket .... nevertheless, we should be able to find some compromise. currently @n1hility and @jwhonce have also been discussing.

[n1hility]

@baude I think you are referring to the machine event socket. @benoitf is talking about the Docker API Forwarding socket that we compute based on a few factors. I think that one we should just add to inspect, it's only needed after the machine is started, and is machine specific.

[benoitf]

Hello, here it's about the Host socket, not the socket for machine events. So socket can be where podman wants. We only need to know the location.

[baude]

Ah! Ok, yes ... @n1hility is that computed on the fly or saved somewhere? I can do the work ...

[benoitf]

It would be nice if that's stored in the json output of machine list output as well

[n1hility]

@baude cool! it's computed on the fly. On mac its just podman.sock in the machine dir:

podman/pkg/machine/qemu/machine.go

Line 1240 in bde8dba

func (v *MachineVM) forwardSocketPath() (*machine.VMFile, error) {

On windows it's in a global location, so it prefixes podman to the machine name to try to prevent conflicts (but only if its not already starting with podman):

podman/pkg/machine/wsl/machine.go

Line 864 in bde8dba

machinePipe := toDist(v.Name)

There are cases where forwarding might be disabled (something else is listening, or its linux where we don't yet support it).

One other thing worth mentioning is that @benoitf does not want the global docker locations (we attempt to publish on both the global and a machine specific), he only wants the machine local one.

Ping me if you want me to test or implement anything!

-Jason