Setting Up Podman and Quadlets on Debian

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 {USER} -u and GROUP=100 with the value of id {USER} -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.