Access from another WSL distribution?

[derkoe]

Is it possible to access the podman socket from another WSL distribution?

❯ wsl -l -v
  NAME                      STATE           VERSION
* Fedora                    Running         2
  podman-machine-default    Running         2

❯ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE     COMMAND   CREATED   STATUS    PORTS     NAMES

❯ wsl -d Fedora docker ps
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

[benoitf]

Hello @derkoe

Could you explain it more ?
Because you're saying that you want to access podman socket but you're using docker commands and not podman commands.

[derkoe]

The Docker client uses the Podman socket - this works under Windows (because Podman Desktop set things correctly).

How do I have to set DOCKER_HOST in another WSL distro to access this Podman socket?

When I use podman command in the Fedora distro it runs container in this distro, I want to access the containers in the podman-machine-default distro.

[benoitf]

It's the "podman machine" code that sets-up the redirect from a local socket to the podman-remote socket running inside WSL

If you need to do that 'by hand' you need to check first, that inside your Fedora WSL, the socket for podman is exposed.
Then, check from within WSL the path of the socket

and then, you would need to do a ssh forward from a local file to the ssh connection within your WSL fedora.

And then you could do DOCKER_HOST=/path/to/your/local.socket docker ps

Another option would be do run the podman machine init command with another image (provided by --image-path)

Also I'm not sure why you want to use another WSL distribution here ?
You want to use that WSL distribution in Podman Desktop (like see containers that are in another WSL distribution) or it's to use the CLI

[derkoe]

I want to do the same as I do in Docker Desktop - access the same containers from Windows and WSL2. Docker desktop sets up a socket in /mnt/wsl/docker-desktop/shared-sockets that can be accessed from any WSL2 distro.

[benoitf]

ok, you want to use podman socket of 'podman-machine-default' from another wsl, not from windows or from the podman WSL (as these 2 already work)

AFAIK, for now, there is no file shared in /mnt/wsl from podman

cc @n1hility @gbraad would it be possible for podman machine to setup a file in /mnt/wsl as well ?

[benoitf]

FYI I moved the question from Podman Desktop to Podman as shared socket should be handled by Podman

[derkoe]

I got it working with the following "trick" (that also Docker Desktop uses):

Go into the podman WSL distro (wsl -d podman-default) and run:

$ sudo mount --bind /run/user/1000/podman /mnt/wsl/podman/

This creates a mount point to the Podman socket in the shared WSL2 file system.

After that you can use this from any distribution with:

$ export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///mnt/wsl/podman/podman.sock
$ docker version
Client: Docker Engine - Community
Version:           20.10.20
API version:       1.41
Go version:        go1.18.7
Git commit:        9fdeb9c
Built:             Tue Oct 18 18:20:18 2022
OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
Context:           default
Experimental:      true

Server: linux/amd64/fedora-36
Podman Engine:
  Version:          4.2.1
  APIVersion:       4.2.1
  Arch:             amd64
  BuildTime:        2022-09-07T21:58:19+02:00
  Experimental:     false
  GitCommit:
  GoVersion:        go1.18.5
  KernelVersion:    5.15.68.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
  MinAPIVersion:    4.0.0
  Os:               linux
Conmon:
  Version:          conmon version 2.1.4, commit:
  Package:          conmon-2.1.4-3.fc36.x86_64
OCI Runtime (crun):
  Version:          crun version 1.6
commit: 18cf2efbb8feb2b2f20e316520e0fd0b6c41ef4d
spec: 1.0.0
+SYSTEMD +SELINUX +APPARMOR +CAP +SECCOMP +EBPF +CRIU +YAJL
  Package:          crun-1.6-2.fc36.x86_64
Engine:
  Version:          4.2.1
  API version:      1.41 (minimum version 1.24)
  Go version:       go1.18.5
  Git commit:
  Built:            Wed Sep  7 21:58:19 2022
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false

Would be great if the mount could be setup by the Podman machine automatically.

[giggio]

This works. I wish it would be more automatic. They recently merged #19705, which should help.
Rancher Desktop already wires the other WSL distribution as well, via a config. It's easier than setting DOCKER_HOST manually.

[mkane91301]

Do I need to do something similar to enable Podman Desktop to see my Docker daemon running in Ubuntu so I can use the UI to manage Docker?

[benoitf]

@mkane91301 Podman desktop needs to check for this extra location when running on Windows. For now it does only check the socket at the default location provided by docker desktop ( not a shared one)

[KrunalDatascience]

In need of a similar usecase. Very new to the world of containerization, podman, linux etc. Any step by step guide to achieve this?

[n1hility]

Convert to a feature request: #16660

[gbraad]

You might also wanna take a look at the duplicate: #15190

[n1hility]

ah!, ill close the new one as dup