Hi,

I have to use some non-well-made containers running a proprietary database product, where the data-directory can not be separated easily from the rest of the container. So modified state is not only stored at some specific paths, which I could re-direct to volumes, but spread over the whole file-system.

Is there an easy way to backup such a container as a whole?

I already tried to export the container to an image and later on re-import it, however it seems during this process some metadata is lost - when I try to start that re-imported container, podman complains about missing start script/commands.

I already found podman clone, however on my system (fedora 35) it doesn't seem to be available.

Are there maybe other ways to duplicate/export an existing container and keeping the clone in a working state?

Thanks, Clemens