I’m moving to a new machine soon and want to re-evaluate some security practices while I’m doing it. My current server is debian with all apps containerized in docker with root. I’d like to harden some stuff, especially vaultwarden but I’m concerned about transitioning to podman while using complex docker setups like nextcloud-aio. Do you have experience hardening your containers by switching? Is it worth it? How long is a piece of string?
I switched and was very glad to do so. You increase your security and so far I haven’t seen any downside. Every container I’ve tried has worked without issues, even complex ones.
Was this with podman or rootless docker?
I also would like to switch to rootless, I have some experience with podman and, while I generally like it, it’s not 100% compatible with (rootful) docker, and can have performance issues if you’re not careful, especiallt with certain file systems like btrfs. I wonder if rootless docker is now better than podman, or preferred for some other reason.
Rootless Podman :) It requires you to learn a little bit of new syntax, for example, the way you mount volumes and pass environment variables can be slightly different, but there’s nothing that hasn’t worked for me.
I’m using this on uBlue uCore, which I would also strongly recommend for security reasons.
Can you expand on why you chose uCore? I was considering CoreOS until just now and the idea of setting up ignition config serving seems overkill for running only one server at home. ignition is still required the same way as CoreOS
One of the main reason I switched to podman was its compatibility with firewalld. Haven’t used rootless docker, but podman and podman-compose gets the job done for me.
I’m running podman and podman-compose with no problem. And I’m happy. At first I was confused by the uid and gid mapping the containers have, but you’ll get used to it.
This are some notes I took, please don’t take all of it for the right choice.
Podman-Stuff
https://github.com/containers/podman/blob/main/docs/tutorials/rootless_tutorial.md
storage.conf
To use the fuse-overlay driver, the storage must be configured:
.config/containers/storage.conf
[storage]
driver = "overlay"
runroot = "/run/user/1000"
graphroot = "/home/<user>/.local/share/containers/storage"
[storage.options]
mount_program = "/usr/bin/fuse-overlayfs"
Lingering (running services without login / after logout)
https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/12001
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/462845/how-to-apply-lingering-immedeately#462867
sudo loginctl enable-linger <user>
Do you need to set lingering for all container users you set up? Does it restart all services in your compose files without issue?
Not sure if it makes a difference and not quite your question but I’ve just switched away from nextcloud-aio to just having my own docker compose, so I have better control and know what’s going on more. I always found it funny and when installing on a new VPS decided to try. It was surprisingly straightforward and Ive been able to install everything I need.
Let me know if my docker compose would help. I still need to add the backup solution but it’s going to be straightforward as well.
I would love to see your compose file. I already have to run special steps on my nextcloud-aio to use it with a reverse proxy so I’m interested in moving away from it.
Hopefully this works and you can see the compose file. I’ve put a few things in [square brackets] to hide some stuff, probably overly cautiously. I have an external network linked to NPM and in that, I use nextcloud-server for IP address and 80 for the port (it’s the inside container port, not 8080 on the system - that took me a long time to figure out!). Add a .env file with everything referenced in the compose file, then (hopefully!) Away you go
