#1301·cli

Podman: automatic `--userns=keep-id` breaks containers using host networking

Author: jankapCreated Sep 3, 2026Updated Sep 3, 2026

I'm facing an issue when using podman and --network=host combination:

Environment

  • @devcontainers/cli: 0.88.0
  • Podman client/server: 5.7.1
  • Host: WSL2
  • Podman server: rootful

Problem

For Podman on Linux and a non-root remoteUser, Dev Containers automatically adds:

--security-opt label=disable --userns=keep-id

See https://github.com/devcontainers/cli/issues/1004 and https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/10399.

When the configuration also requires --network=host, the container fails to start.

Minimal underlying reproducer

This fails:

podman run --rm \
  --network=host \
  --userns=keep-id \
  docker.io/library/alpine:3.20 \
  true

Error:

crun: mount `sysfs` to `sys`: Operation not permitted: OCI permission denied

Without --userns=keep-id, it succeeds:

podman run --rm \
  --network=host \
  docker.io/library/alpine:3.20 \
  true

The CLI-generated podman run command contains both:

--userns=keep-id --network=host

The automatic argument is added in:

src/spec-node/singleContainer.ts
getPodmanArgs()

Expected behavior

Users must be able to prevent the CLI from adding --userns=keep-id.

Possible fixes

No one is perfect I'm afraid.

  1. Do not add --userns=keep-id when --network=host is present.
  2. Add a setting or CLI option to disable automatic Podman arguments.
  3. Respect an explicit --userns=... in runArgs and do not add --userns=keep-id.
  4. Make automatic --userns=keep-id opt-in instead of unconditional for non-root users.

Big thanks.