Description

A poststop hook is not run if a poststart hook fails.
crun and runc do not have the same behaviour.

I first opened an issue in the crun project:

• runc vs crun: different behavior when poststart hook fails and poststop hook creates a file containers/crun#2047

Steps to reproduce the issue

On a Fedora 43 system do the following steps:

1. Create hooks dir

   mkdir $HOME/hooks.d
   

2. Create policy file $HOME/hooks.d/foobar1.json containing

   {
     "version": "1.0.0",
     "hook": {
       "path": "/bin/false"
     },
     "when": {
       "annotations": {
       "^myannotation$": "yes"
       }
     },
     "stages": ["poststart"]
   }
   

3. Create policy file $HOME/hooks.d/foobar2.json containing

   {
     "version": "1.0.0",
     "hook": {
       "path": "/bin/touch",
       "args": ["/bin/touch", "/tmp/poststop-created"]
     },
     "when": {
       "annotations": {
       "^myannotation$": "yes"
       }
     },
     "stages": ["poststop"]
   }
   

4. Create file $HOME/test.bash containing

   #!/bin/bash
   set -o nounset
   runtime=$1
   podman \
     --runtime $runtime \
     --hooks-dir ~/hooks.d \
     run \
     --rm \
     --annotation myannotation=yes \
     docker.io/library/alpine \
     sh -c "sleep 1 && echo hello && sleep 1"
   

5. Test with crun (that was built from the git main branch a few days ago: git commit d268d5375bea4ba692cd8e96040a770da78868e5)

   $ ls -l /tmp/poststop-created
   ls: cannot access '/tmp/poststop-created': No such file or directory
   $ bash test.bash /tmp/crun/crun
   2026-03-14T08:25:31.178231Z: error executing hook `/bin/false` (exit code: 1)
   Error: `/tmp/crun/crun start a3035173b6311e002171be689725f2e63f23f31d4c329cf9e4b4cb38d76dc224` failed: exit status 1
   $ ls -l /tmp/poststop-created
   -rw-r--r--. 1 test test 0 Mar 14 09:25 /tmp/poststop-created
   $
   

   result: The file /tmp/poststop-created was created
6. Test with runc (version 1.5.0-rc.1). The executable was installed to /tmp/runc.amd64

   $ ls -l /tmp/poststop-created
   ls: cannot access '/tmp/poststop-created': No such file or directory
   $ bash test.bash /tmp/runc.amd64
   Error: OCI runtime error: /tmp/runc.amd64: time="2026-03-17T17:38:38+01:00" level=error msg="runc create failed: error running poststart hook #0: exit status 1, stdout: , stderr: "
   $ ls -l /tmp/poststop-created
   ls: cannot access '/tmp/poststop-created': No such file or directory
   $
   

   result: The file /tmp/poststop-created was not created

Describe the results you received and expected

In step 6, I would have expected the file /tmp/poststop-created to be created.

What version of runc are you using?

runc version 1.5.0-rc.1
commit: v1.5.0-rc.1-0-g5d2588d3
spec: 1.3.0
go: go1.25.8
libseccomp: 2.6.0

Host OS information

NAME="Fedora Linux"
VERSION="43 (Forty Three)"
RELEASE_TYPE=stable
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=43
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora Linux 43 (Forty Three)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:43"
DEFAULT_HOSTNAME="fedora"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f43/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://ask.fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=43
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=43
SUPPORT_END=2026-12-02

Host kernel information

Linux asus 6.19.8-200.fc43.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Mar 13 22:06:06 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux