I did another generate today and after some tinkering with options got the below, and I don't have a clue what went wrong in original post. sudo podman generate systemd -n -f --restart-policy=always sqlx22 sudo systemctl enable container-sqlx22.service works # container-sqlx22.service # autogenerated by Podman 4.2.0 # Tue Jan 24 17:00:30 CST 2023 [Unit] Description=Podman container-sqlx22.service Documentation=man:podman-generate-systemd(1) Wants=network-online.target After=network-online.target RequiresMountsFor=/run/containers/storage [Service] Environment=PODMAN_SYSTEMD_UNIT=%n Restart=always TimeoutStopSec=70 ExecStart=/usr/bin/podman start sqlx22 ExecStop=/usr/bin/podman stop -t 10 sqlx22 ExecStopPost=/usr/bin/podman stop -t 10 sqlx22 PIDFile=/run/containers/storage/overlay-containers/afcbd216eedb0d74075a522e8 fc6cfc5a8dc8a0a3dfb2ce65434891b30fb0eb8/userdata/conmon.pid Type=forking [Install] WantedBy=default.target