Accessing Podman Desktop from WSL

[YulawOne]

Hello everyone!

I'm quite new to NixOs, and I cannot figure out how to set up Podman connection to Podman Desktop

I found a configuration for docker-desktop, however, there is no similar setup for Podman and additionally, I don't see a way how to install the podman-remote package on Nixos.

If anyone came across the issue please help 🙏

[DwcksDinh]

I have same issue with you

[ian-h-chamberlain]

I was able to get this working by installing Podman desktop on Windows, then following the instructions you linked.

I don't see a way how to install the podman-remote package on Nixos.

As it turns out, you don't need to! From that page:

The Podman client is available with a full podman installation or with the podman-remote version 4.x and higher. On Ubuntu it is generally easier to install podman-remote.

So basically, I think you just need something like this for your config, and nixos-rebuild switch (you might also need to restart WSL for the group to take effect):

    pkgs = with pkgs; [
      podman
    ];
    users.groups.podman = {
      gid = 10;
      members = [ yourUserName ];
    };

Then I did

podman system connection add --default podman-machine-default-root unix:///mnt/wsl/podman-sockets/podman-machine-default/podman-root.sock

and everything started working.

The only caveat I've found so far is you need to use podman --remote or podman -r for every command, which is slightly annoying but can be worked around with a shell alias easily enough, I guess...