Quadlet: Podman attempts to pull images even when asked otherwise

[askoa]

I can't stop podman from attempting to pull images. In the .container file, I added a line Pull=never but it seems to have no effect.

I am not able to bring up the container when offline. I can bring up the container if I connect to internet.

podman version is 5.6.1. Any ideas how to fix this?

[Container]
Image=docker.io/pihole/pihole:2025.08.0
Pull=never
ContainerName=pihole

journalctl logs:

Sep 18 09:41:02 secureblue systemd[1478]: Starting pihole.service - Pihole in podman container...
Sep 18 09:41:02 secureblue podman[1589]: 2025-09-18 09:41:02.76293621 -0400 EDT m=+0.073588902 container create d452b7f9666ecced4727d25d9c6f9e326a7c57515e87d08fe54d44dc717dda55 (image=docker.io/pihole/pihole:2025.08.0, name=pihole, org.opencontainers.image.created=2025-08-04T11:51:37.597Z, org.opencontainers.image.source=https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole, org.opencontainers.image.description=Pi-hole in a docker container, org.opencontainers.image.revision=f4aac365653ffe7d8dbe9472193026e78cdfd174, org.opencontainers.image.url=https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole, PODMAN_SYSTEMD_UNIT=pihole.service, org.opencontainers.image.licenses=NOASSERTION, org.opencontainers.image.title=docker-pi-hole, org.opencontainers.image.version=2025.08.0)
Sep 18 09:41:02 secureblue podman[1589]: 2025-09-18 09:41:02.728880487 -0400 EDT m=+0.039533220 image pull 8befa64b9db9b616e81591b3eacf3126008193858d65428b4521120cfa4ed1be docker.io/pihole/pihole:2025.08.0
Sep 18 09:41:02 secureblue pasta[1610]: Couldn't set IPv4 route(s) in guest: Invalid argument

[Luap99]

pasta[1610]: Couldn't set IPv4 route(s) in guest: Invalid argument

That is a pasta error and not related to the the pull policy setting at all. The log line for the pull seems to be always generated even when there was no pull.

What pasta version are you using? And how does the interfaces/routes look on your host when it fails, you can test easily with
pasta --config-net ip addr and see if this works correctly when you are offline.

[askoa]

What is the pasta version you have installed?

pasta 0^20250911.g6cbcccc-1.fc42.x86_64

[sbrivio-rh]

Oops. No known issues there. Can you please run ip -4 addr show and ip -4 route show on the host and share the result? You can happily obfuscate IP addresses, as long as you replace them with values that are consistent between addresses and routes.

[sbrivio-rh]

Ah, sorry, you already shared that. I thought the output was from inside the container, but that's not the case. Let me check...

[sbrivio-rh]

Patch at https://archives.passt.top/passt-dev/[email protected]/.

See that little linkdown in the output of ip route show? That's a RTNH_F_LINKDOWN flag, which is a state flag and makes no sense for us to copy when we copy routes, so the kernel refuses our route.

You can try out the patch like this, it should take a few seconds:

git clone git://passt.top/passt
cd passt
b4 shazam https://archives.passt.top/passt-dev/[email protected]/ # you might need to dnf install b4
make
sudo make install # or do it as root

you can cleanly remove the binaries installed with sudo make uninstall.

[askoa]

@sbrivio-rh that worked. Thank you!