Affected versions: CentOS Stream 9

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Containers fail to start with overlay driver errors.

Environment & Reproduction

After a kernel update or storage.conf change.

Root Cause Analysis

Driver in storage.conf doesn’t match what the running kernel supports.

Quick Triage

Check `podman info` for the storage graph driver.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Inspect `~/.config/containers/storage.conf` for driver and runroot.

Illustrative mockup for centos-stream-9 — terminal_or_shell
Podman storage driver mismatch diagnostics in terminal — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Reset rootless storage: `podman system reset` and pull images again.

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Illustrative mockup for centos-stream-9 — logs_or_journal
journal and log evidence for Podman storage driver mismatch — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Pin the driver to `overlay` with `mount_program = /usr/bin/fuse-overlayfs` if needed.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Containers start and pull/run normally.

Rollback Plan

Restore prior storage.conf and re-import images from saved tarballs.

Prevention & Hardening

Test storage changes in a snapshot before applying widely.

Linked to fuse-overlayfs and SELinux context drift.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for centos-stream-9.

View all centos-stream-9 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Podman storage configuration documentation.

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