Testing on Fedora

[PorkeyThePine]

Description

I have been considering running this container on my Unraid server in the future, so I decided I wanted to try running it on my desktop machine to get familiar with it.

However I'm running into what seems to be permissions issues. I'm new to Fedora and it seems SELinux (and podman?) has been an obstacle getting this container to run.

I had to make some changes to the compose.yml and .env files (specifically for GPU acceleration), but I did seem to get most of the initial permissions issues cleared; it seems like the container itself is starting without permissions errors, but it looks like the container is failing internally;

[steam-headless] | Build: [2026-05-09 03:45:03] [master] [096fc4b1c09288b105b2eada7c386d41a51efc08] [debian]
[steam-headless] | 
[steam-headless] | [ /etc/cont-init.d/10-setup_user.sh: executing... ]
[steam-headless] | sed: couldn't open temporary file /etc/cont-init.d/sedSWJGcV: Permission denied

What am I doing wrong here?

[PorkeyThePine]

I've been bashing my head against this and I've made some progress. I don't know what I did to fix my initial issue, but now the container seems to be "starting" but I'm getting connection refused/reset on VNC and the webUI. This seems to be because VNC and the X server aren't starting?
I'm guessing it's due to GPU access not actually working.

I've been trying to get the container to run off my secondary GPU, but even when I try giving it access to "all" GPUs, it seems like something still isn't taking.

It should be noted that I have two identical GPUs; 2x RTX 2080 Ti, and my motherboard (ASRock X570M PRO4) enumerates them backwards. The primary GPU (x16 slot) is GPU 1 while the secondary GPU (PCIe x4 slot ) is GPU 0.

I've been trying to run the container with podman compose -f docker-compose.yml --env-file steam-headless.env up.

docker-compose.yml

--- version: "3.8"

x-podman:
in_pod: false

services:
steam-headless:
image: josh5/steam-headless:latest
restart: unless-stopped,
shm_size: ${SHM_SIZE}
ipc: host # Could also be set to 'shareable'
ulimits:
nofile:
soft: 1024
hard: 524288
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
- SYS_ADMIN
- SYS_NICE
security_opt:
- seccomp:unconfined,
- apparmor:unconfined
- label=disable
userns-mode: keep-id
ports:
- "8083:8083"
- "5900:5900"

# GPU PASSTHROUGH

# NETWORK:
## NOTE:  With this configuration, if we do not use the host network, then physical device input
##        is not possible and your USB connected controllers will not work in steam games.
## network_mode: host is unsupported on podman (you cannot publish open ports)
# network_mode: host
hostname: ${NAME}
extra_hosts:
  - "${NAME}:127.0.0.1"

# ENVIRONMENT:
## Read all config variables from the .env file
environment:
  # System
  - TZ=${TZ}
  - USER_LOCALES=${USER_LOCALES}
  - DISPLAY=${DISPLAY}
  # User
  - PUID=${PUID}
  - PGID=${PGID}
  - UMASK=${UMASK}
  - USER_PASSWORD=${USER_PASSWORD}
  # Mode
  - MODE=${MODE}
  # Web UI
  - WEB_UI_MODE=${WEB_UI_MODE}
  - ENABLE_VNC_AUDIO=${ENABLE_VNC_AUDIO}
  - PORT_NOVNC_WEB=${PORT_NOVNC_WEB}
  - NEKO_NAT1TO1=${NEKO_NAT1TO1}
  # Steam
  - ENABLE_STEAM=${ENABLE_STEAM}
  - STEAM_ARGS=${STEAM_ARGS}
  # Sunshine
  - ENABLE_SUNSHINE=${ENABLE_SUNSHINE}
  - SUNSHINE_USER=${SUNSHINE_USER}
  - SUNSHINE_PASS=${SUNSHINE_PASS}
  # Xorg
  - ENABLE_EVDEV_INPUTS=${ENABLE_EVDEV_INPUTS}
  - FORCE_X11_DUMMY_CONFIG=${FORCE_X11_DUMMY_CONFIG}
  # Nvidia specific config
  #- NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=${NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES}
  #- NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=${NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES}
  #- NVIDIA_DRIVER_VERSION=${NVIDIA_DRIVER_VERSION}

# DEVICES:
devices:
  # Use the host fuse device [REQUIRED].
  - /dev/fuse
  # Add the host uinput device [REQUIRED].
  - /dev/uinput
  # Add NVIDIA HW accelerated devices [OPTIONAL].
  # NOTE: If you use the nvidia container toolkit, this is not needed.
  #       Installing the nvidia container toolkit is the recommended method for running this container
  #- /dev/nvidia0
  #- /dev/nvidiactl
  #- /dev/nvidia-modeset
  #- /dev/nvidia-uvm
  #- /dev/nvidia-uvm-tools
  #- /dev/nvidia-caps/nvidia-cap1
  #- /dev/nvidia-caps/nvidia-cap2
  #- nvidia.com/gpu=0
  - nvidia.com/gpu=all
  - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
  - /dev/input:/dev/input
group_add:
  - video
  - input
# Ensure container access to devices 13:*
#device_cgroup_rules:
  #- 'c 13:* rmw'
  
# VOLUMES:
volumes:
  # The location of your home directory.
  - ${HOME_DIR}/:/home/default/:rw

  # The location where all games should be installed.
  # This path needs to be set as a library path in Steam after logging in.
  # Otherwise, Steam will store games in the home directory above.
  - ${GAMES_DIR}/:/mnt/games/:rw

  # The Xorg socket.
  - ${SHARED_SOCKETS_DIR}/.X11-unix/:/tmp/.X11-unix/:rw

  # Pulse audio socket.
  - ${SHARED_SOCKETS_DIR}/pulse/:/tmp/pulse/:rw

steam-headless.env

NAME=SteamHeadless TZ=America/Toronto USER_LOCALES=en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 DISPLAY=:56 SHM_SIZE=2G HOME_DIR=/opt/container-data/steam-headless/home/ SHARED_SOCKETS_DIR=/opt/container-data/steam-headless/sockets GAMES_DIR=/home/user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/

PUID=1000
PGID=1000
UMASK=000
USER_PASSWORD=password

MODE=primary
WEB_UI_MODE=vnc
ENABLE_VNC_AUDIO=true
PORT_NOVNC_WEB=8083
NEKO_NAT1TO1=

ENABLE_STEAM=true
STEAM_ARGS=-silent

ENABLE_SUNSHINE=true
SUNSHINE_USER=user
SUNSHINE_PASS=password

ENABLE_EVDEV_INPUTS=false

FORCE_X11_DUMMY_CONFIG=true
DISPLAY_WIDTH=1920
DISPLAY_HEIGHT=1080

#NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=all

#NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=nvidia.com/gpu=0
#NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all