Systemd-Import Expands Its Container Capabilities

The systemd-import command is now more powerful after the latest batch of changes committed by Lennart Poettering prior to starting the weekend.

The systemd-import command is one of systemd's newer additions and it landed this past December. Systemd-import allows downloading foreign Linux containers and installing them locally. The tool supports downloading and the updating of containers, including from Docker.

With the latest systemd Git activity, there's now support for importing QCOW2 container images into normal raw disk images. This change allows for importing Ubuntu Cloud images.

The other change is for downloading .XZ compressed images with systemd-import. This change allows for downloading Fedora Cloud raw images and then decompressing them on-the-fly.

These changes will be found with the upcoming systemd 219 release.