Red Hat Summit Red Hat SummitSupportConsoleDevelopersStart a trialContact

Chapter 2. Set up an air-gapped environment

You can set up the components of Red Hat build of Podman Desktop in a secure, air-gapped environment. The core challenge is mitigating the application’s reliance on automatic online downloads. However, the solution requires the following workflow:

  • Pre-fetching: You must manually download all required components, such as Kind or Docker Compose binaries, from official GitHub release pages using an internet-connected machine.
  • Manual installation: You must securely transfer all the downloaded components to the air-gapped environment. Then, install by running the component installer.
  • Configuration: You must place all supporting binaries in specific directories recognized by the system’s Path variable. For example, use /usr/local/bin/ or a custom Windows directory. This allows Red Hat build of Podman Desktop to find and run the components correctly.

This manual approach ensures the container development environment is fully operational despite the lack of external network connectivity.

Expand
Table 2.1. Set up an air-gapped environment for the following components
ComponentPlatformDownload Source (URL to fetch binary)Installation location on air-gapped machine

Kind

Linux (AMD64)

Kind GitHub releases: Download the kind-linux-amd64 file for the desired version.

Location: /usr/local/bin/kind

Make the file executable with this command: chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kind

 

macOS (Intel/ARM64)

Kind GitHub releases: Download the appropriate kind-darwin-amd64 or kind-darwin-arm64 file.

Location: /usr/local/bin/kind

Make the file executable with this command: chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kind

 

Windows (AMD64)

Kind GitHub releases: Download the kind-windows-amd64.exe file.

Location: Any directory in your system’s Path, for example, C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\kind\.

Ensure the directory is added to your Windows Path environment variable for Red Hat build of Podman Desktop to find it. Rename the file to kind.exe.

Docker Compose (V2 plugin)

Linux (AMD64)

Docker Compose GitHub releases: Download the appropriate docker-compose-linux-x86_64 file.

Location (recommended plugin path): /usr/local/bin/compose

Create the cli-plugins folder if it doesn’t exist. Rename the downloaded binary to docker-compose and ensure it has executable permissions (chmod +x).

 

macOS (Intel/ARM64)

Docker Compose GitHub releases: Download the appropriate docker-compose-darwin-amd64 or docker-compose-darwin-aarch64 file.

Location (recommended plugin path): /usr/local/bin/compose

Create the cli-plugins folder if it doesn’t exist. Rename the downloaded binary to docker-compose and ensure it has executable permissions (chmod +x).

 

Windows (AMD64)

Docker Compose GitHub releases: Download the appropriate docker-compose-windows-x86_64.exe file.

Location: Any directory in your system’s Path, for example, C:\Program Files\Docker\cli-plugins\docker-compose.exe

Rename the downloaded file to docker-compose.exe and ensure its directory is in the Windows Path environment variable.

Bootable Containers (bootc)

Linux (AMD64)

bootc CLI is not required.

Requires pre-loading a builder container image, such as bootc-image-builder, into Podman. For more details, refer to Download the bootc image builder.

 

macOS and Windows

The Bootable Containers extension provides the functionality to package an operating system into a single container image. Red Hat registry: Synchronize the bootc OCI image from the registry. Then, on the Extensions page, click the Install custom…​ button to install the bootc image.

No host binary is required for macOS and Windows. The tooling runs inside the Podman machine VM. Ensure the Podman machine is in rootful mode.

Red Hat OpenShift Local

All platforms

Red Hat Customer Portal: Download the Red Hat OpenShift Local bundle.

Location: Extract the downloaded bundle to a working directory, for example, $HOME/crc-bundle/. Move the extracted crc binary to the /usr/local/bin directory for easy command-line access.

The installation procedure requires the oc and openshift-install binaries. You must download and place them in your system’s PATH.

2.1. Download the bootc image builder on Linux
Copy link

The Bootable Containers extension supports offline workflows by leveraging pre-cached container images. To build disk images offline, you must first pull the required images and build the bootc container while online. Once these local artifacts are prepared, you can use the extension to generate disk images entirely offline. Supported formats include .qcow2, .raw, .vmdk, and others.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Use an internet-connected machine to pull the appropriate bootc-image-builder image: 

    podman pull registry.redhat.io/<rhel_version>/bootc-image-builder:<version_tag>

    where:

    <rhel_version>
    Specifies the version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that the image builder tool is based on. Replace this with a value, such as rhel9 or rhel10.
    <version_tag>
    Refers to the specific release version or lifecycle tag of the image builder tool. Replace this with a value, such as 10.1 or 9.7.

  2. Pull the base bootc image you plan to use in your Containerfile: 

    podman pull registry.redhat.io/<rhel_version>/rhel-bootc:latest

    Where:

    <rhel_version>
    Specifies the version of RHEL you want to use as your base operating system. Replace this with a value, such as rhel9 or rhel10.
  3. Build your bootc container image from your Containerfile.
  4. Connect to your air-gapped machine.
  5. Use the bootc extension to build disk images in the required format.
Red Hat logoGithubredditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust. Explore our recent updates.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

Theme

© 2026 Red HatBack to top