DO188 edition 3, OCp 4.18, page 85 "When you use the --user option, by default, systemd starts the service at your login, and stops it at your logout. You can start your enabled services at the operating system boot, and stop them on shutdown, by running the loginctl enable-linger command." enable-linger is no longer necessary. and enable/disable is not honored by systemd. this is for rootless containers Source: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-systemd.unit.5.html   text:  In particular, it is not possible to  systemctl enable  them in order for them to become automatically enabled on the next boot.