podman-export(1)

💅 podman-export — like, your container's whole filesystem but as a tar file, bestie

okay so first things first: we're in the General Commands Manual section, this page is podman-export(1), and it's about to make your container's filesystem travel. buckle up 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

podman-export — export a container's filesystem contents as a tar archive. yes, the whole vibe, boxed up. 📦

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

podman export [options] container

podman container export [options] container

two ways in, same energy. pick your fave 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so podman export exports the filesystem of a container and saves it as a tarball on your local machine. no cloud, no drama. it writes to STDOUT by default, and you can redirect it into a file with the --output flag. the image of the container you exported can then be pulled back in with podman import — round trip, iconic. 🔁

🚨 if you actually want to export image(s) with parent layers, that's podman save, not this. different tool, different purpose, iykyk.

also, real talk, a tiny warning: : is a restricted character and cannot be part of the file name. periodt. don't fight it. 🙈

here's the part that lowkey matters most: podman export operates on a container's filesystem — it flattens that filesystem into a single-layer tarball with no image layers, no history, no tags. one layer, one vibe. ✨

that is genuinely different from podman save, which archives an image and preserves its layers, history and tags. so if your goal is archiving an image instead, go see podman-save(1). i said what i said 💅

and here's how the invocations look, verbatim:

podman [GLOBAL OPTIONS]

podman export [GLOBAL OPTIONS]

podman export [OPTIONS] CONTAINER

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• --help, -h — print the usage statement. when in doubt, -h it out 🧚
• --output, -o — write to a file. the default is STDOUT, so if you don't pass this, it's just gonna beam the tarball straight at your terminal 🌈

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

export a container into a specified tar ball (look at that gorgeous long ID, main character energy):

$ podman export -o redis-container.tar 883504668ec465463bc0fe7e63d53154ac3b696ea8d7b233748918664ea90e57

export a container to stdout, redirected into a file:

$ podman export 883504668ec465463bc0fe7e63d53154ac3b696ea8d7b233748918664ea90e57 > redis-container.tar

🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

podman(1), podman-import(1) — go read your besties too, they're obsessed with you 🫶

💜 HISTORY 💜

August 2017, originally compiled by Urvashi Mohnani umohnani@redhat.com ⟨mailto:umohnani@redhat.com⟩ — shoutout to the og, absolute legend 👑

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this lil sign-off lives down here in the footer zone where it's just podman-export(1) chillin' in the General Commands Manual — go flatten some filesystems, stay hydrated, mwah 💋✨