Using the fuse-overlayfs storage driver for Podman and Buildah

By default, newly created workspaces that do not specify a devfile will use the Universal Developer Image (UDI). The UDI contains common development tools and dependencies commonly used by developers.

Podman and Buildah are included in the UDI, allowing developers to build and push container images from their workspace.

By default, Podman and Buildah in the UDI are configured to use the vfs storage driver. For more efficient image management, use the fuse-overlayfs storage driver which supports copy-on-write in rootless environments.

You must meet the following requirements to use fuse-overlayfs in a workspace:

  1. For OpenShift versions older than 4.15, the administrator has enabled /dev/fuse access on the cluster by following Configuring fuse-overlayfs.

  2. The workspace has the necessary annotations for using the /dev/fuse device. See Accessing /dev/fuse from a workspace.

  3. The storage.conf file in the workspace container has been configured to use fuse-overlayfs. See Enabling fuse-overlayfs with a Configmap.

Additional resources