Error copying file to container using Podman on Windows 11

Question

I'm trying to run a SQL script against a SQL Server instance that is running inside a Podman container on a Windows 11 host.

To do this, I'm attempting to copy the script file to the container using the following command:

podman cp .\baseline.sql mssql-server-1:/tmp/baseline.sql

it returns:

error rewriting "c:....\baseline.sql" to be relative to "/": expected root directory to be an absolute path, got "/"

It seams the paths are ok, because if I change either the source or destination Podman reports correctly the error.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue or can provide insight into what might be going wrong here? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This is generally followed by containers/podman issue 14862:

In the meantime as a workaround you can access your windows drive through the mount that is on the wsl linux host, using unix path conventions, like this:

podman cp /mnt/c/users/foo/bar/file.bak mycontainer:/var/opt/backups

And:

I was able to get a file copy into my container working with the following.
I redeployed my podman machine, rebuilt my container...
this does work:

wsl -d podman-machine-default -u user enterns podman cp \
    /mnt/d/2022_Projects/assessments/HK197500195.bin se92:/root/

Or:

wsl -d podman-machine-default -u user enterns podman cp \
    /mnt/c/"your file location" container:/sql/

Meaning:

"Prefixing" docker cp with wsl -d podman-machine-default -u user enterns also worked for me. Concretely, I wrote:

wsl -d podman-machine-default -u user enterns podman cp \
    "myfile.txt" my-container-name:/tmp/

Also:

Simple workaround for me is to use podman machine ssh command like this:

podman machine ssh "podman cp /mnt/c/dev/file.py container:/usr/src/app"

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Q1 2025: Dominick Gendill add this testimony:

I've been using the wsl copy workaround for a while now, but I've recently upgraded to Podman Desktop v1.15.0 and Podman v5.3.1, and for some reason it's stopped working, and I get the error "Error: container "sql_server_2017" does not exist"

wsl -d podman-machine-default -u user enterns podman cp /mnt/c/Users/dgendill/Documents/file.sql sql_server_2017:/home/file.sql

I'm certain I have the "sql_server_2017" container running because I can see it running in Podman Desktop.

I also tried running podman cp /mnt/c/Users/dgendill/Documents/file.sql sql_server_2017:/home/file.sql and I get a message saying the file doesn't exist, but I'm certain that path exists.

Error: "/mnt/c/Users/dgendill/Documents/file.sql" could not be found on the host: no such file or directory

I was able to get everything working by...

1. Ran Cleanup / Purge data in Troubleshooting > Repair
2. Ran podman machine init
3. Ran podman machine start
4. Ran podman pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-latest
5. Ran podman run -d --name sql_server_2017 ...

Then I was able to run the wsl command in windows CMD.
Running in windows bash didn't work.