OPENSHELL_PODMAN_SOCKET doesn't change the path to the podman.sock which is used by openshell-gateway container

[vsbogd]

Agent Diagnostic

Agent output is not relevant.

Description

Starting OpenShell gateway using the command from https://docs.nvidia.com/openshell/about/container-gateway#using-podman fails with:

2026-05-19T10:32:05.005249Z  WARN openshell_driver_podman::driver: Podman socket not found; is the Podman service running? Set OPENSHELL_PODMAN_SOCKET or XDG_RUNTIME_DIR to override. path=/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock
Error:   × execution error: failed to create compute runtime: connection error: /run/
  │ user/1000/podman/podman.sock: No such file or directory (os error 2)

Reproduction Steps

1. Run podman run -d \ --name openshell-gateway \ -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 \ -v openshell-state:/var/openshell \ -v "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/podman/podman.sock:/var/run/podman.sock" \ -e OPENSHELL_DRIVERS=podman \ -e OPENSHELL_PODMAN_SOCKET=/var/run/podman.sock \ -e OPENSHELL_DB_URL=sqlite:/var/openshell/openshell.db \ -e OPENSHELL_DISABLE_TLS=true \ ghcr.io/nvidia/openshell/gateway:latest

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
• Podman: 4.9.3
• Container image: ghcr.io/nvidia/openshell/gateway latest 94d72dc7a526

Logs

2026-05-19T10:32:05.005249Z  WARN openshell_driver_podman::driver: Podman socket not found; is the Podman service running? Set OPENSHELL_PODMAN_SOCKET or XDG_RUNTIME_DIR to override. path=/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock
Error:   × execution error: failed to create compute runtime: connection error: /run/
  │ user/1000/podman/podman.sock: No such file or directory (os error 2)

Agent-First Checklist

• I pointed my agent at the repo and had it investigate this issue
• I loaded relevant skills (e.g., debug-openshell-cluster, debug-inference, openshell-cli)
• My agent could not resolve this — the diagnostic above explains why

[russellb]

PR here: #1483

Could you test it?