Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Configuring rootless Podman networking

To restore rootless Podman networking when the default pasta stack fails on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform mirror or install hosts, you can set the default rootless network back to slirp4netns in the /etc/containers/containers.conf file, or in the user’s ~/.config/containers/container.conf file.

You might need to configure rootless Podman networking after upgrading to RHEL 9.5 or Podman 5.0. In these versions, the default networking stack changed from slirp4netns to pasta. As a result, systems that previously operated without a default route might no longer be able to establish network connectivity and could display the following error:

Error: pasta failed with exit code 1:
External interface not usable

Prerequisites

You have updated to RHEL 9.5 or Podman 5.0.

Procedure

Use your preferred IDE to modify the /etc/containers/containers.conf or ~/.config/containers/container.conf file.
1. To modify the /etc/containers/containers.conf file, enter the following command:
  $ nano /etc/containers/containers.conf
2. To modify the ~/.config/containers/container.conf file, enter the following command:
  $ nano ~/.config/containers/container.conf

Add, or update, the [network] section as in the following example:

# ...
[network]
default_rootless_network_cmd = "slirp4netns"
# ...

Restart the Podman system as the rootless user by entering the following command. Note that all containers must be stopped and restarted for the change to take effect.
```
$ podman system migrate
```