podman-container-exists(1)

💖 podman-container-exists(1) — the "does my container even exist tho" check 💖

okay bestie, so this one lives in the General Commands Manual section, and it's literally the most low-stakes, high-value little command. sit down, we're doing a vibe check on your local storage. ✨

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

podman-container-exists — check if a container exists in local storage. that's it. that's the whole job. 🎀

---

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

podman container exists [options] container

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the tea: podman container exists checks if a container exists in local storage. you feed it a container ID or a name, and it goes looking. 👀

the way it talks back to you is through exit codes, iykyk:

• 0 — found it, slay, the container is there 💅
• 1 — nope, not found
• 125 — uh oh, there was an issue accessing the local storage 😭

fr fr, exit codes are the whole language here. no cute output message, just a number. read it and weep (or celebrate).

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --external — check for external containers as well as Podman containers. these external containers are generally created via other container technology, like Buildah or CRI-O. the default is false. 💜
• -h, --help — prints the usage statement. the default is false. 🫶

---

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

1. check if a container called webclient exists in local storage. here, the container does exist. 👑

$ podman container exists webclient
$ echo $?
0

2. check if a container called webbackend exists in local storage. here, the container does not exist. 💀

$ podman container exists webbackend
$ echo $?
1

3. check if a container called ubi8-working-container, created via Buildah, exists in local storage. here, the container does not exist. 🙈

$ podman container exists --external ubi8-working-container
$ echo $?
1

---

🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

• podman(1)

---

📜 HISTORY 📜

November 2018 — originally compiled by Brent Baude bbaude@redhat.com ⟨mailto:bbaude@redhat.com⟩. iconic behavior, honestly. 🌟

---

okay that's the whole page bestie, thanks for coming to my ted talk. this was podman-container-exists(1) from the General Commands Manual, and it's been giving November 2018 energy since, well, November 2018. 🦋 bye pookie, go check if your containers exist 💖✨