podman-healthcheck(1)

💅 podman-healthcheck — manage healthchecks for containers 🩺✨

okay so bestie, welcome to the podman healthcheck suite of commands — it's literally the whole toolkit for managing container healthchecks, from the General Commands Manual (yes that's the vibe, we're fancy here) 🎀

podman healthcheck subcommand

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

The podman healthcheck commands are used to manage container healthchecks. That's the whole assignment, and they ate. 💅

Healthchecks are typically sourced from images — so if you wanna spot one, use podman image inspect and peek at the image's Config section. iykyk. 🔍

You can also define healthchecks yourself when creating a container via podman run or podman create, like:

• --health-cmd — sets the check command (the string form runs via CMD-SHELL; the array form uses CMD) 🫶
• --health-interval, --health-timeout, --health-retries, --health-start-period — the whole timing squad ⏱️
• --no-healthcheck — nukes an image-defined healthcheck, no cap 🙈
• Startup healthcheck knobs: --health-startup-cmd, --health-startup-interval, --health-startup-retries, --health-startup-success, --health-startup-timeout 🚀

🌸 Startup Healthcheck vs Regular Healthcheck 🌸

Regular healthcheck runs continuously throughout the container's lifetime to monitor ongoing health. The --health-start-period option gives you a grace period during container initialization, where failures won't mark the container as unhealthy. it's giving "give her a minute to wake up" ☕

Startup healthcheck is a separate healthcheck that runs during container startup and then transitions to the regular healthcheck once the container has successfully started. It's designed for containers with extended or unpredictable startup times:

• Define it with --health-startup-cmd — and yes, it requires a regular healthcheck to also be set 👑
• The startup healthcheck cannot be sourced from an image; it can only be set manually, periodt
• Once the startup healthcheck succeeds (based on --health-startup-success consecutive successes), it stops and the regular healthcheck takes over 🦋
• If it fails too many times (--health-startup-retries), the container can be restarted based on --health-on-failure 💀

When to use each:

• Use --health-start-period for simple cases where you know roughly how long startup takes 🍓
• Use the startup healthcheck (--health-startup-cmd) when startup time is unpredictable, or when you need a different check during startup than during normal operation 🌈

To debug or inspect healthchecks:

• Use podman inspect <container> and view .Config.Healthcheck for the effective settings. Other relevant sections are .State.Healthcheck, Config.StartupHealthCheck, .Config.HealthcheckOnFailureAction, .Config.HealthMaxLogCount, .Config.HealthMaxLogSize, and .Config.HealthLogDestination 🧚
• Use podman inspect --format '{{.State.Health.Status}} {{.Config.Healthcheck}}' <container> to show current health status and healthcheck config 👀
• Trigger on-demand with podman healthcheck run <container> and check the exit code (0=success, 1=failure, 125=error) 🔥
  • To get more details on why a healthcheck failed, run podman --log-level debug healthcheck run <container> 🕵️
• Ensure the health command exists inside the container and is quoted properly (prefer single quotes for shell pipelines) 🎀

To update healthchecks:

• Use podman update <flag> <container> to update the healthcheck settings of a container while the container is running 💫
• Example: podman update --health-max-log-count=10 <container> to store up to 10 healthcheck results in the log 📝

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🦋 SUBCOMMANDS 🦋

not me turning the table into a list, but every detail is staying, don't worry bestie 💖

• run — man page: podman-healthcheck-run(1) — Run a container healthcheck 🩺

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

podman(1), podman-run(1), podman-create(1), podman-inspect(1), podman-update(1) — go read them, they're iconic ✨

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💜 HISTORY 💜

Feb 2019, originally compiled by Brent Baude bbaude@redhat.com ⟨mailto:bbaude@redhat.com⟩ — thank you Brent, king behavior 🌟

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 the footer's just chilling there as podman-healthcheck(1), so consider this your official sign-off from the General Commands Manual — stay healthy, stay hydrated, and check your containers 💅🎀💖