Podman: overlay directories being created in random directories

Hi :wave:

This is a strange issue, and I don’t know what is causing it but every once in awhile I see these directories scattered thru out some folders on my filesystem. What could be happening here? Here are a couple examples but I’ve delete about a dozen of these already scattered thru-out my filesystem.

devin@vyos:~$ pwd
/home/devin
devin@vyos:~$ ls -l
total 16
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Feb 28 00:11 overlay
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Feb 27 23:27 overlay-containers
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Feb 28 00:11 overlay-layers
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Feb 27 23:27 overlay-locks
devin@vyos:~$ sudo tree overlay*
overlay
├── idmapped-lower-dir-true
├── metacopy()-false
├── native-diff()-true
└── overlay-true
overlay-containers
overlay-layers
├── mountpoints.json
└── mountpoints.lock
overlay-locks

devin@vyos:/config/persistence/containers/unifi/data/logs$ pwd
/config/persistence/containers/unifi/data/logs
devin@vyos:/config/persistence/containers/unifi/data/logs$ ls -la
total 4864
drwxrwsr-x 7  999 systemd-journal    4096 Feb 28 01:22 .
drwxrwsr-x 5 root vyattacfg          4096 Feb 21 23:37 ..
-rwxrwxr-x 1  999 systemd-journal    3118 Feb 19 19:29 migration.log
-rwxrwxr-x 1  999 systemd-journal  605814 Mar  1 01:16 mongod.log
drwx--S--- 2  999 systemd-journal    4096 Feb 28 01:22 overlay
drwx--S--- 2  999 systemd-journal    4096 Feb 28 01:22 overlay-containers
drwx--S--- 2  999 systemd-journal    4096 Feb 28 01:22 overlay-layers
drwx--S--- 2  999 systemd-journal    4096 Feb 28 01:22 overlay-locks
drwxrwsr-x 2  999 systemd-journal    4096 Feb 17 14:57 remote
-rwxrwxr-x 1  999 systemd-journal 4335408 Feb 28 21:24 server.log

Only podman version was changed
The base logic the same

@Viacheslav I am not following, what do you mean? Why are these overlay* folders being created in seemingly random places?

We don’t create it by hands
I don’t know the reason why they created, it wasn’t before
Needs to investigate it.

same issue here
podman version 4.3.1
1.4-rolling-202304130846