Podman containers on Bazzite host do not appear in Beszel UI

[benLewisDev]

Describe the problem

I’m trying to monitor Podman containers on a Bazzite/gaming machine in the Beszel web UI, alongside Docker containers on a separate server.

The Docker host works as expected, but the Podman host only shows system metrics. The agent connects successfully, but the Podman containers do not appear in the UI.

Environment

Beszel hub

• Running on another machine in my homelab
• Docker containers from my server appear correctly in the UI

Bazzite host

• Bazzite / Fedora-based gaming workstation
• Podman containers are run with rootless Podman
• Beszel agent is running as a container via Podman Compose

Expected behavior

I expected the Beszel agent on the Bazzite host to report:

• host metrics
• Podman container metrics / container list

Actual behavior

• Host metrics show up correctly
• The agent connects to the Beszel hub successfully
• No Podman containers appear in the Beszel UI for the Bazzite host

Agent configuration

Current compose file on the Bazzite host:

services:
  beszel-agent:
    image: henrygd/beszel-agent
    container_name: beszel-agent
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    user: "1000"
    volumes:
      - /run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:ro
      - ./beszel_agent_data:/var/lib/beszel-agent
    environment:
      LISTEN: 45876
      KEY: ${KEY}
      TOKEN: ${TOKEN}
      HUB_URL: http://<internal-ip>:8090
      DOCKER_HOST: unix:///run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock

Logs

The agent logs don't seem to show anything useful

Additional notes

• The Beszel hub already shows Docker containers from my server correctly
• The Bazzite agent is connected and reporting host metrics
• The only missing piece is the Podman container list / container visibility

Question

What is the correct way to run the Beszel agent on a rootless Podman host so that Podman containers appear in the Beszel UI?

Is there a required socket path, environment variable, or compose configuration that I’m missing?

Goal

I want to run services on the Bazzite machine while still keeping visibility in Beszel.
For example, I want to run Odysseus on the gaming machine so that i can make use of the more powerful GPU and monitor it alongside my server-side Docker containers.

[svenvg93]

Your compose config looks right — DOCKER_HOST matches the mounted socket path, so this isn't a Docker-vs-Podman code issue on Beszel's side. This is very likely SELinux blocking access to the bind-mounted socket, which Beszel can't distinguish from "no containers" unless you turn on debug logging.

Two things to try:

1. Turn on debug logging first to confirm the real error:

   environment:
     LOG_LEVEL: debug

   If you then see something like connect: permission denied on the podman socket (rather than "no such file"), that confirms SELinux is the culprit.

2. Add the SELinux relabel flag to the socket mount:

   volumes:
     - /run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock:ro,z

   This fixed the identical symptom for someone in discussion #1539 — no need to disable SELinux or add extra capabilities, just the z relabel option on the socket mount.

Also worth double-checking that the rootless Podman API socket is actually running on the Bazzite host:

systemctl --user enable --now podman.socket
ls -la /run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock

If :ro,z doesn't help, the debug log will tell us exactly what's failing and we can go from there.