Deploy a .NET App with Podman + systemd: Stable Restarts, Real Logs, No Magic

This showed up in r/dotnet today: people are still looking for a “boring deployment” story for .NET services that is not Kubernetes and not a fragile nohup script. If you are on a Linux VM, Podman plus systemd is a solid middle ground: a containerized app managed like a real service.

Source discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/dotnet/comments/1q8gq1u/how_to_deploy_net_applications_with_systemd_and/

Why this works well for .NET 9 and .NET 10 services

• Systemd owns restarts: if the process crashes, it is restarted, and you get a clear reason.
• Journald owns logs: no more hunting for rotated files on disk.
• Podman is daemonless: systemd starts exactly what it needs.

Build and run the container

Here is a minimal Containerfile for a .NET 9 app (works the same for .NET 10, just switch the base tag):

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:9.0 AS base
WORKDIR /app
EXPOSE 8080

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:9.0 AS build
WORKDIR /src
COPY . .
RUN dotnet publish -c Release -o /out

FROM base
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=build /out .
ENV ASPNETCORE_URLS=http://+:8080
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "MyApp.dll"]

Then:

podman build -t myapp:1 .
podman run -d --name myapp -p 8080:8080 myapp:1

Let systemd own it (the useful part)

Podman can generate a unit file that systemd understands. Note: podman generate systemd is deprecated in Podman 4.4+ in favor of Quadlet, but the generated output still works and shows the concept clearly:

podman generate systemd --new --name myapp --files

This produces something like container-myapp.service. Move it into place:

sudo mv container-myapp.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now container-myapp.service

Now you get clean operational commands:

sudo systemctl status container-myapp.service
sudo journalctl -u container-myapp.service -f
sudo systemctl restart container-myapp.service

Two details that save you later

Make configuration explicit

Use environment variables and a mounted config directory instead of baking secrets into the image. With systemd you can set overrides in a drop-in file, and you can restart safely.

Pick a restart policy that matches reality

If your app fails fast due to missing config, endless restarts are noise. Prefer a restart policy that does not hammer the box. Systemd lets you control delays and burst limits.

If you want a single “am I doing this right?” test: reboot the VM and see if your .NET service comes back up without you SSH-ing in. That is the bar.

Further reading: https://docs.podman.io/