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Podman– Command execution failed with exit code 125

After updating WSL on one of the developer machines, Podman failed to work. When we took a look through Podman Desktop, we noticed that Podman had stopped running and returned the following error message:

Error: Command execution failed with exit code 125


Here are the steps we tried to fix the issue:

We started by running podman info to get some extra details on what could be wrong:

>podman info

OS: windows/amd64

provider: wsl

version: 5.3.1

Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM

Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to connect: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2655: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

That makes sense as the podman VM was not running. Let’s check the VM:

>podman machine list

NAME                    VM TYPE     CREATED       LAST UP     CPUS        MEMORY      DISK SIZE

podman-machine-default  wsl         6 months ago  4 days ago  2           2GiB        100GiB

The machine is still there so that is good news. Let’s try to restart it:

>podman machine stop

Machine "podman-machine-default" stopped successfully

>podman machine start

Starting machine "podman-machine-default"

The operation timed out because a response was not received from the virtual machine or container.

Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateInstance/CreateVm/HCS_E_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT

Error: the WSL bootstrap script failed: command C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\wsl.exe [-u root -d podman-machine-default /root/bootstrap] failed: exit status 0xffffffff

Looks like something is wrong with the VM. Lets remove it:

>podman machine rm podman-machine-default

The following files will be deleted:

C:\Users\<user>\.config\containers\podman\machine\wsl\podman-machine-default.json

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\podman\podman-machine-default.sock

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\podman\podman-machine-default-gvproxy.sock

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\podman\podman-machine-default-api.sock

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\podman\podman-machine-default.log

Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y

Logging out.

The operation has completed.

Once the VM is removed, we can try to recreate it:

>podman machine init

Looking up Podman Machine image at quay.io/podman/machine-os-wsl:5.3 to create VM

Getting image source signatures

Copying blob 54c816116e80 done   |

Copying config 44136fa355 done   |

Writing manifest to image destination

54c816116e80d74b8e638baf1fb37f3d6c4b6545f8c405d998169513766e1dc5

Extracting compressed file: podman-machine-default-amd64: done

Importing operating system into WSL (this may take a few minutes on a new WSL install)...

Importeren wordt uitgevoerd. Dit kan enkele minuten duren.

The operation timed out because a response was not received from the virtual machine or container.

Error code: Wsl/Service/RegisterDistro/CreateVm/HCS_E_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT

Error: the WSL import of guest OS failed: command C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\wsl.exe [--import podman-machine-default C:\Users\<user>\.local\share\containers\podman\machine\wsl\wsldist\podman-machine-default C:\Users\<user>\.local\share\containers\podman\machine\wsl\podman-machine-default-amd64 --version 2] failed: exit status 0xffffffff

Still no luck! But what do you do if everything else failed…

A reboot!

We rebooted the machine and indeed the error magically disappeared.

On to the next issue…

More information

Error upgrading Podman

Podman 5.3.1 - Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: open \.ssh\known_hosts:

Podman Desktop–The WSL import of guest OS failed: exit status 0xffffffff

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