running podman with cgroup-manager=systemd?

[Toby-Broom]

Hello, I'm not sure if this is possiable, as I have it working with cgroupfs?

If it switch it back to systemd then I get these sorts of issues:

building image
running docker command: build "." -t boinc__lhcathome.cern.ch_lhcathome__theory_2922-4783493-481 -f Dockerfile
program: podman
time="2026-02-01T22:43:32+01:00" level=warning msg="The cgroupv2 manager is set to systemd but there is no systemd user session available"
time="2026-02-01T22:43:32+01:00" level=warning msg="For using systemd, you may need to log in using a user session"
time="2026-02-01T22:43:32+01:00" level=warning msg="Alternatively, you can enable lingering with: loginctl enable-linger 997 (possibly as root)"
time="2026-02-01T22:43:32+01:00" level=warning msg="Falling back to --cgroup-manager=cgroupfs"
error running container: from /usr/bin/crun creating container for [/bin/sh -c dnf install -y https://cvmrepo.s3.cern.ch/cvmrepo/yum/cvmfs-release-latest.noarch.rpm && dnf install -y epel-release && dnf install -y libxcrypt-compat bc bzip2 lighttpd procps-ng make gcc which cvmfs bind-utils netcat zlib-devel compat-openssl11 freetype && dnf clean all]: sd-bus call: Interactive authentication required.: Permission denied
: exit status 1

I tried to enable linger for the boinc user but it did not change anything and I have sub*id's set for the boinc user.

[Toby-Broom]

I was able to fix my issues after many hours of tring things

editing the service for boinc allowed it to be run.

to get the nnn value you can run
id -u boinc,

my numbers, were different on each computer, some were 120, others 125 and other 997.

systemctl edit boinc-client
to edit the overide of the default BOINC setting:

[Unit]
Requires=user@nnn.service #Wait for the users instance of systemd to start since BOINC is set to auto start at boot.
After=user@nnn.service #Wait for the users instance of systemd to start since BOINC is set to auto start at boot.

[Service]
ProtectHome=false #Since podman need to read and write to /run/user/ folder this needs to be off so it can communicate with podman
Delegate=cpu io memory pids #I needed this to ensure that the statistics about the containers are populated correctly
MemoryAccounting=yes  #I needed this to ensure that the statistics about the containers are populated correctly
ProtectSystem=full  #needed for VirtualBox to run correctly
Environment="XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/nnn" #I'm not sure if this is needed but seemed to help BOINC find podman
Environment="DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/nnn/bus" #I'm not sure if this is needed but seemed to help BOINC find podman

For me the boinc user that was created automatically had many services that were not needed (e.g. audio, firmware updater) so I could disable these, its more a cosmetic thing.

systemctl --user -M boinc@ mask \
  pipewire.service \
  pipewire-pulse.service \
  pipewire-pulse.socket \
  filter-chain.service \
  wireplumber.service \
  xdg-document-portal.service \
  xdg-permission-store.service \
  snap.firmware-updater.firmware-notifier.service \
  snap.firmware-updater.firmware-notifier.timer \
  snap.prompting-client.daemon.service \
  snap.snapd-desktop-integration.snapd-desktop-integration.service

Hopefully this is useful to get your podman/BOINC running too.