this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Arch Linux

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I've had the following error on F2FS, I've deleted the affected folder, and would keep getting the same error on F2FS.

I tried reformatting to EXT4, and am now still getting the same error. I checked if Modprobe could enable the "overlay" module, but I get the following error:

sudo ls /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/fs/overlayfs/overlay.ko
ls: cannot access '/lib/modules/6.19.6-arch1-1/kernel/fs/overlayfs/overlay.ko': No such file or directory
sudo modprobe overlay
modprobe: FATAL: Module overlay not found in directory /lib/modules/6.19.6-arch1-1

However the following does exist:

/lib/modules/6.19.8-arch1-1/kernel/fs/overlayfs/overlay.ko.zst

And also go this error:

Error: configure storage: kernel does not support overlay fs: 'overlay' is not supported over extfs at "/home/dudess/.local/share/containers/storage/overlay": backing file system is unsupported for this graph driver

The following shows CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS=m which online it says it could be available but is not loaded.

zcat /proc/config.gz | grep OVERLAY_FS
CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS=m
CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_REDIRECT_DIR=y
# CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_REDIRECT_ALWAYS_FOLLOW is not set
CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_INDEX=y
CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_XINO_AUTO=y
CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_METACOPY=y
# CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_DEBUG is not set

And the following shows ext4 for the file system type.

mount | grep ext4
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime)
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This is usually because the overlay module isn't built as a loadable module in your kernel โ€” it's either built-in or not compiled at all.

Check with:

grep OVERLAY /boot/config-$(uname -r)

If it shows CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS=y, the module is built into the kernel (not loadable), so modprobe won't find it but it should still work. Podman just checks incorrectly.

If it's not there at all, you might need to install linux-headers and rebuild, or use a different storage driver like vfs (slower but works everywhere):

# In containers.conf or storage.conf
[storage]
driver = "vfs"