Podman Quadlet Cookbook

Podman Quadlets are awesome, but vastly under-utilized in the Open Source communities. This repository gathers all the recipes (hence the name "Cookbook") to deploy Open Source technologies using Podman Quadlets.

Architecture guidelines

• SELinux is enabled by default. Privileged containers are avoided whenever possible.
• Each cookbook runs as a dedicated Linux user, either directly with --user= or through user namespaces and UID/GID mapping.
• Persistent data are stored in /var/lib/quadlets/$(PROJECT_NAME). Precious data are stored in /var/lib/virtiofs/data/$(PROJECT_NAME).
• Configuration is stored in /etc/quadlets/$(PROJECT_NAME).
• Each Systemd unit / Podman Quadlet perform only one task. Especially, the one-off initialization procedures, upgrade processes, etc. are run as separate units.
• Cookbooks are designed to be composable. If you need to deploy a software that needs PostgreSQL as database and a reverse proxy in front, just add the postgresql and traefik cookbooks as dependencies!

Available Cookbooks

• base: base configuration for Fedora CoreOS with fastfetch, tmpfiles setup, and QEMU guest agent.
• gitea: self-hosted Git service, a lightweight GitHub/GitLab alternative.
• keycloak: open source identity and access management server with PostgreSQL backend.
• lego: Let's Encrypt/ACME client for automatic SSL/TLS certificate management and renewal.
• miniflux: minimalist RSS/Atom feed reader with PostgreSQL backend.
• nextcloud: self-hosted file sync and share platform with all its dependencies, handles automated upgrades.
• nginx: Nginx web server with content initialized and updated from a GIT repository.
• postgresql: PostgreSQL database server with automated major upgrades, periodic backup and restore capabilities.
• qemu-user-static: multi-architecture container support using QEMU user-mode emulation.
• restic-server: REST server backend for restic backups with append-only mode and Prometheus metrics.
• samba: SMB/CIFS file sharing server for network storage access.
• seedbox: complete media server stack with Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr, qBittorrent, Jellyfin, and FlareSolverr.
• traefik: modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer with automatic service discovery.
• vaultwarden: Bitwarden-compatible password manager server with PostgreSQL backend.
• vmagent: Victoria Metrics agent for collecting and forwarding metrics.
• vsftpd: secure FTP server with TLS support and Let's Encrypt certificate integration.

Cookbook layout

• Makefile: Cookbook's Makefile. Includes ../common.mk. (REQUIRED)
• overlay.bu: Fedora CoreOS Butane Specifications to include in the generated Ignition files. (OPTIONAL)
• fcos.bu: The Fedora CoreOS Butane Specifications to build the test FCOS Virtual Machine. (OPTIONAL)
• config/*: Cookbook's configuration files (read-only). Goes into /etc/quadlets/$(PROJECT_NAME).
• config/examples/*: Cookbook configuration files (sample configuration, to be overwritten for each deployment). Goes into /etc/quadlets/$(PROJECT_NAME).
• config/examples/*.env: Systemd environment files, potentially containing secrets (to be overwritten for each deployment). Goes into /etc/quadlets/$(PROJECT_NAME).
• sysctl.d/*.conf: Sysctl settings. Goes into /etc/sysctl.d.
• sysctl.d/examples/*.conf: Sysctl settings (to be overwritten for each deployment). Goes into /etc/sysctl.d.
• tmpfiles.d/*.conf: systemd-tmpfiles.d settings. Goes into /etc/tmpfiles.d.
• tmpfiles.d/examples/*.conf: systemd-tmpfiles.d settings (to be overwritten for each deployment). Goes into /etc/tmpfiles.d.
• profile.d/*.conf: Bash profile settings. Goes into /etc/profile.d.
• profile.d/examples/*.conf: Bash profile settings (to be overwritten for each deployment). Goes into /etc/profile.d.
• other/$(DEPENDENCY)/*: Sample configuration files to inject into the Cookbook dependencies. For example, other/postgresql/nextcloud.sql goes into /etc/quadlets/postgresql/init.d/nextcloud.sql. This behavior is described in the hooks.mk.
• hooks.mk: the Makefile that registers rules to copy cookbook configuration files when used as a dependency.

Pre-requisites

• Fedora / CentOS Stream / RHEL or derivative operating system.
• Systemd

Development

To develop Podman Quadlets, it is advised to create a Fedora Virtual Machine dedicated to this task.

You can create a Fedora Virtual Machine with the following command:

sudo ./create-dev-vm.sh

Then, retrieve the IP address of your VM with the following command:

sudo virsh domifaddr quadlets

Then, on your host, add the following configuration to your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host quadlets
        HostName <IP_ADDRESS_OF_YOUR_VM>
        User root
        ForwardAgent yes
        StrictHostKeyChecking=no
        UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

Finally, install the Remote - SSH extension for Visual Studio Code, and connect to your VM using the "Remote - SSH: Connect to Host..." command.

If needed, you can also connect to your VM using ssh root@quadlets from your terminal or from the libvirt console using sudo virsh console quadlets with the login root and the password root.

License

MIT