User Mode Networking

####> This option file is used in: ####> podman machine init, machine set ####> If file is edited, make sure the changes ####> are applicable to all of those.

--user-mode-networking

This option can only be used for the WSL provider on Windows. On all other platforms this option is ignored and user mode networking will always be true there because these providers always depend on gvproxy (our user mode networking tool for the VMs)

In contrast, The Windows/WSL backend defaults to false, and follows the standard WSL network setup. Changing this setting to true on Windows/WSL informs Podman to replace the WSL networking setup on start of this machine instance with a user-mode networking distribution. Since WSL shares the same kernel across distributions, all other running distributions reuses this network. Likewise, when the last machine instance with a true setting stops, the original networking setup is restored.

In some VPN configurations the VPN may drop traffic from alternate network interfaces, including VM network devices. By enabling user-mode networking VPNs observe all podman machine traffic as coming from the host, bypassing the problem.