# Podman Auto Updating Systemd Services

> podman generate systemd plus an autoupdate label: containers that start on boot and update themselves.

- URL: https://seanbehan.ca/posts/podman-systemd
- Author: Sean Behan
- Published: September 23, 2021
- Tags: docker, linux, podman
- Reading time: 1 minute

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### Introduction

Podman[^1] has a nice feature called `generate` that lets you generate

different kinds of configuration files for starting pods. One that I use often

is `podman generate systemd` which generates a new user service that can be

started with `systemctl --user start container-yourcontainer.service` or

enabled.

### Auto-Updating Containers

If you want your container to auto update you can simply pass it the flag

`--label "io.containers.autoupdate=registry"` when you're creating it. The

systemd service will automatically pull the latest versions of containers

before starting them. You can manually update your container images now using

`podman auto-update`.

If you want to update your images on a schedule you can enable the

`podman-auto-update.timer` using `systemctl --user enable --now

podman-auto-update.timer` which will auto update your containers every Monday

morning.[^2]

### Kubernetes YAML Generation

You can also generate a Kubernetes YAML configurations using `podman generate

kube`. This can then be loaded in Kubernetes to run your containers.

[^1]: https://podman.io

[^2]: https://fedoramagazine.org/auto-updating-podman-containers-with-systemd/