Podman

podman run

If you prefer to use podman run, here are the steps you can use on Debian 13 or compatible distros:

# Install podman
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install podman
# Create data directory
mkdir -p ~/socrates-data
# Start SO-CRATES
podman run --userns=keep-id --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
  -v $HOME/socrates-data:/data:Z -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000 \
  ghcr.io/dougburks/so-crates:main

This publishes the port on localhost only. To let other machines on your network connect, use -p 8000:8000 instead.

podman compose

If you prefer to use podman compose, here are the steps you can use on Debian 13 or compatible distros:

# Install and configure podman and podman-compose
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install podman podman-compose
# Download the Podman compose file
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dougburks/so-crates/refs/heads/main/docker-compose.podman.yml
# Record your UID/GID in a .env file for the compose file's user mapping -
# podman compose reads this automatically, every time, from any terminal
# (an `export UID GID` only lasts for the current shell session, so `down`/
# `restart` run later or from a new terminal would silently run as root
# instead - see docker-compose.podman.yml's `user: "${UID}:${GID}"`)
echo "UID=$(id -u)" > .env
echo "GID=$(id -g)" >> .env
# Create data directory
mkdir -p socrates-data
# Start SO-CRATES (add the -d option to run in the background if desired)
podman compose -f docker-compose.podman.yml up

To stop:

podman compose -f docker-compose.podman.yml down

To restart:

podman compose -f docker-compose.podman.yml restart

Air-Gapped / Offline Deployment for Podman

Our container image bakes in 14 Suricata rule sources (Emerging Threats Open enabled by default), YARA Forge rules, and SigmaHQ/Zircolite rules at build time, so PCAP, log, email and binary analysis - and the built-in sample files - all work without internet access. To copy to an isolated network, pull and save the container image using an internet-connected machine:

podman pull ghcr.io/dougburks/so-crates:main
podman save ghcr.io/dougburks/so-crates:main > so-crates.tar

Then transfer so-crates.tar to the isolated network via USB or other media. On the air-gapped machine:

podman load < so-crates.tar
mkdir -p ~/socrates-data
podman run --userns=keep-id --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
  -v $HOME/socrates-data:/data:Z -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000 \
  ghcr.io/dougburks/so-crates:main

Build Your Own Podman Image

If you prefer to build your own Podman image, you can clone this GitHub repo and then build the image:

git clone https://github.com/dougburks/so-crates
cd so-crates
podman build -t so-crates .
mkdir -p ~/socrates-data
podman run --userns=keep-id --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
  -v $HOME/socrates-data:/data:Z -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000 \
  so-crates

Cloud and proxied environments

If you access SO-CRATES through a proxy hostname rather than localhost or an IP (e.g. Killercoda, GitHub Codespaces, or your own reverse proxy), add the hostname to the ALLOWED_HOSTS environment variable or requests are rejected with "Invalid Host header" (a DNS-rebinding defense). A wildcard covers per-session hostnames:

podman run --rm -v $HOME/socrates-data:/data:Z -p 8000:8000 \
  -e ALLOWED_HOSTS='*.killercoda.com' ghcr.io/dougburks/so-crates:main