Zammad Podman Quadlets on Spoljarevic's Knowledgebase

Introduction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is Zammad?

Zammad is an open-source ticket system. A ticket system is essential for any IT sysadmin — it organizes user problems into tickets and lets you document everything you did to solve them, instead of losing that history in email or chat.

What are Quadlets?

Quadlets are a Podman feature that lets you describe containers, pods, networks, and volumes as native systemd unit files. systemd generates the actual .service units from them at boot/login, so Podman containers get managed exactly like any other systemd service — restarted on failure, started in dependency order, and started automatically without a separate compose daemon running in the background.

Usage

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Prerequisites

A recent Podman version with Quadlet support (Podman 4.4+; check with podman --version).
systemd (used both as the rootless user’s systemd --user instance and, optionally, system-wide).

1. Configure your environment

Copy the example environment file and fill in your own values:

cp .env.example .env
$EDITOR .env

At minimum, review and change the database/Elasticsearch credentials (POSTGRES_PASS, ELASTICSEARCH_PASS), ZAMMAD_FQDN, TZ, and the backup schedule (BACKUP_TIME, HOLD_DAYS). Everything under “PROXY / EXTERNAL ACCESS” and “Cloudflare Tunnel” in .env.example is optional and commented out by default.

Code Explanation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Anatomy of a Quadlet unit

Every .container file in this repo follows the same shape:

[Unit]
After=zammad.pod ... # start order
Requires=zammad.pod ... # hard dependency
PartOf=zammad.pod # stop/restart together with the pod

[Container]
Image=...
ContainerName=...
Pod=zammad.pod # joins the shared pod network namespace
Exec=... # command run inside the Zammad image for this role
EnvironmentFile=.env

[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=...

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target # lets systemctl enable start it at boot/login

PartOf=zammad.pod means stopping or restarting the pod stops/restarts the container with it. Pod=zammad.pod puts every container in the same network namespace, so they can reach each other over localhost instead of needing container-to-container DNS.

FAQ

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why Quadlets instead of `docker-compose` / `podman-compose`?

Quadlets translate directly into native systemd units, so Podman containers get systemd’s process supervision, dependency ordering, and boot/login integration for free — no separate compose daemon needs to keep running in the background, and it works cleanly rootless.

Can I really run this rootless?

Yes — that’s the point of this setup. Place the unit files in ~/.config/containers/systemd/, run systemctl --user daemon-reload, and use loginctl enable-linger <user> so the services keep running even when you’re logged out. See Usage for the full steps.

Zammad Podman Quadlets on Spoljarevic's Knowledgebase

Introduction

What is Zammad?

What are Quadlets?

Usage

Prerequisites

1. Configure your environment

Code Explanation

Anatomy of a Quadlet unit

FAQ

Why Quadlets instead of docker-compose / podman-compose?

Can I really run this rootless?

Why Quadlets instead of `docker-compose` / `podman-compose`?