podman-machine-set(1) General Commands Manual podman-machine-set(1)
NAME
podman-machine-set - Set a virtual machine setting
SYNOPSIS
podman machine set [options] [name]
DESCRIPTION
Change a machine setting.
The default machine name is podman-machine-default. If a machine name is
not specified as an argument, then the settings will be applied to pod-
man-machine-default.
Rootless only.
Default Podman machine settings can be set via the [machine] section in
the containers.conf(5) file.
OPTIONS
--cpus=number
Number of CPUs. Only supported for QEMU machines.
--disk-size=number
Size of the disk for the guest VM in GB. Can only be increased. Only
supported for QEMU machines.
--help
Print usage statement.
--memory, -m=number
Memory (in MB). Only supported for QEMU machines.
--rootful
Whether this machine prefers rootful (true) or rootless (false) con-
tainer execution. This option updates the current podman remote connec-
tion default if it is currently pointing at the specified machine name
(or podman-machine-default if no name is specified).
Unlike [podman system connection default] this option makes the API
socket, if available, forward to the rootful/rootless socket in the VM.
Note that changing this option means that all the existing contain-
ers/images/volumes, etc... are no longer visible with the default con-
nection/socket. This is because the root and rootless users in the VM
are completely separated and do not share any storage. The data however
is not lost and you can always change this option back or use the other
connection to access it.
--usb=bus=number,devnum=number or vendor=hexadecimal,product=hexadecimal or
""
Assign a USB device from the host to the VM. Only supported for QEMU
Machines.
The device needs to be present when the VM starts. The device needs to
have proper permissions in order to be assign to podman machine.
Use an empty string to remove all previously set USB devices.
Note that using bus and device number are simpler but the values can
change every boot or when the device is unplugged. Using vendor and
product might lead to collision in the case of multiple devices with the
same vendor product value, the first available device is assigned.
--user-mode-networking
Indicates that this machine relays traffic from the guest through a
user-space process running on the host. In some VPN configurations the
VPN may drop traffic from alternate network interfaces, including VM
network devices. By enabling user-mode networking (a setting of true),
VPNs observe all podman machine traffic as coming from the host, bypass-
ing the problem.
When the qemu backend is used (Linux, Mac), user-mode networking is
mandatory and the only allowed value is true. In contrast, The Win-
dows/WSL backend defaults to false, and follows the standard WSL network
setup. Changing this setting to true on Windows/WSL informs Podman to
replace the WSL networking setup on start of this machine instance with
a user-mode networking distribution. Since WSL shares the same kernel
across distributions, all other running distributions reuses this net-
work. Likewise, when the last machine instance with a true setting
stops, the original networking setup is restored.
EXAMPLES
To switch the default Podman machine from rootless to rootful:
$ podman machine set --rootful
or more explicitly set with value true.
$ podman machine set --rootful=true
Switch the default Podman machine from rootful to rootless.
$ podman machine set --rootful=false
Switch the specified Podman machine from rootless to rootful.
$ podman machine set --rootful myvm
SEE ALSO
podman(1), podman-machine(1), containers.conf(5)
HISTORY
February 2022, Originally compiled by Jason Greene jason.greene@red-
hat.com ⟨mailto:jason.greene@redhat.com⟩
podman-machine-set(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 06:15:52 CET 2025.