In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up a Debian home server with Cockpit and Quadlets. While this is the method that worked for me, I’m always open to improvements and suggestions. Future posts will cover how to configure specific Quadlets in detail. This setup assumes you already have a Debian server with SSH access and the backports repository enabled.
Install Podman
sudo apt -y install podman
To make things easier, symlink /etc/containers/systemd to ~/containers
ln -s /etc/containers/systemd ~/containers
Create a folder to holder the data and configs each service
mkdir ~/services
Let’s create a quadlet for a Postgres database. Paste the following in a file ~/containers/postgres.container replace {USER} with your server username and {PASSWORD} with a secure password, you can also change the Postgres username if you like. Replace USER=1000 with the value of id -u and GROUP=100 with the value of id -g. The # vim: set filetype=systemd : at the bottom allows the .container file to highlight like a .service file, which it essentially is.
[Unit]
Description=Podman - Postgres
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
[Container]
Image=docker.io/library/postgres:17
AutoUpdate=registry
ContainerName=postgres
Environment=POSTGRES_USER=postgres
Environment=POSTGRES_PASSWORD={PASSWORD}
Volume=/home/{USER}/services/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
PublishPort=5432:5432
HealthCmd="pg_isready -U postgres"
HealthStartPeriod=15s
HealthInterval=30s
HealthTimeout=30s
HealthRetries=3
User=1000
Group=100
[Service]
Restart=always
TimeoutStartSec=900
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
# vim: set filetype=systemd :
Reload systemd to recognize the service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Enable the service
sudo systemctl enable --now postgres.service
Check the status of the serice
sudo systemctl status postgres.service
Keep an eye out for more posts similar to this with details on how to set up specific services.