Configuring fuse-overlayfs

By default, the Universal Developer Image (UDI) contains Podman and Buildah which you can use to build and push container images within a workspace. However, Podman and Buildah in the UDI are configured to use the vfs storage driver which does not provide copy-on-write support. For more efficient image management, use the fuse-overlayfs storage driver which supports copy-on-write in rootless environments.

To enable fuse-overlayfs for workspaces for OpenShift versions older than 4.15, the administrator must first enable /dev/fuse access on the cluster by following Enabling container access to /dev/fuse for OpenShift older than 4.15.

This is not necessary for OpenShift versions 4.15 and later, since the /dev/fuse device is available by default. See Release Notes.

After enabling /dev/fuse access, fuse-overlayfs can be enabled in two ways:

  1. For all user workspaces within the cluster. See Enabling fuse-overlayfs for all workspaces.

  2. For workspaces belonging to certain users. See Using the fuse-overlayfs storage driver for Podman and Buildah.