On a server running fedora F43 with the updates-testing repository enabled, I’ve updated to podman 5.7.0 (rpm file podman-5.7.0~rc1-1.fc43.x86_64). Whenever I run a podman command, I now get a warning:
“The deprecated BoltDB database driver is in use. This driver will be removed in the upcoming Podman 6.0 release in mid 2026. It is advised that you migrate to SQLite to avoid issues when this occurs. Set SUPPRESS_BOLTDB_WARNING environment variable to remove this message.”
My searching hasn’t yet found a step by step guide as to how to migrate from BoltDB to SQLite. Is this process documented anywhere?
General gist would be to export the data from BoltDB as CSV or JSON and the import that into sqlite. I’ve no idea what BoltDB supports as export formats, but at a basic level, straight SQL could be used.
We (Podman) do not (yet?) have a official guide to migrate. The general way to do that is to run podman system reset which deletes everything and then the next command will create/use the sqlite backend.
Most likely there will be no automatic migration so removing and recreating the resources will be required. Botldb is not a SQL based database so there is no trivial migration.
While a migration command/script could likely be written spending time on that has not been prioritized in our team so I would not count on waiting for that. Though if someone wants to contribute that I would suggest to reach out to us on github upstream