kuke image

Manage container images in a realm's containerd namespace.

kuke image [command]

Every realm maps to its own containerd namespace (<realm>.kukeon.io). kuke image loads and deletes images inside that namespace. The default realm is default (containerd namespace default.kukeon.io); pass --realm kuke-system to operate on the system realm where the kukeond image lives.

Images land in a realm via one of two producers: kuke build builds an OCI image from a Dockerfile straight into the realm's containerd namespace, and kuke image load imports a pre-built OCI/docker tarball into the same namespace.

Listing and describing images moved to the kuke get family in #824 — use kuke get image[s] for both the cross-realm default and the single-image describe form. The old kuke image get / kuke image ls / kuke image list aliases are gone (no deprecation window).

Subcommands

Command	What it does
kuke image load	Import an OCI/docker image tarball into a realm's containerd namespace
kuke image delete	Remove an image from a realm's containerd namespace
kuke image prune	Reclaim dangling image layers and orphaned leases in a realm

kuke image load

kuke image load [tarball | -] [flags]

Import an OCI/docker image tarball into the containerd namespace mapped to --realm. Pass a tarball path, - for stdin, or --from-docker <ref> to shell out to docker save.

kuke image * is daemon-independent by design: every subcommand wraps containerd's image API directly in-process — there is no "with daemon" mode for images, and the --no-daemon flag is intentionally absent on these commands. kuke image load always requires root because it writes to containerd's content store; it fails fast with a clear remediation if you forget sudo.

Flag	Default	Description
--from-docker	(empty)	Image reference to pipe in via docker save <ref> (mutually exclusive with the positional tarball)
--realm	default	Target realm; the image lands in <realm>.kukeon.io

Examples

# Load a saved tarball into the default realm
sudo kuke image load my-image.tar

# Pipe a docker-build into kuke-system for a local kukeond image
sudo kuke image load --from-docker kukeon-local:dev --realm kuke-system

# Stdin
docker save myimage:latest | sudo kuke image load -

kuke image delete

kuke image delete <ref> [flags]
kuke image rm     <ref> [flags]      # alias

Flag	Default	Description
--realm	default	Target realm; the lookup runs in <realm>.kukeon.io

Examples

# Remove an image from the default realm
sudo kuke image delete docker.io/library/nginx:alpine

# Remove an image from kuke-system
sudo kuke image delete docker.io/library/kukeon-local:dev --realm kuke-system

kuke image prune

kuke image prune [flags]

Reclaim dangling image layers and orphaned leases in a realm.

kuke image prune reclaims dangling image layers and orphaned content leases in the target realm's containerd namespace, then reports how many leases were released versus retained. It takes no positional arguments.

Flag	Default	Description
--realm	default	Target realm; the prune runs in <realm>.kukeon.io

Examples

# Prune the default realm
sudo kuke image prune

# Prune kuke-system
sudo kuke image prune --realm kuke-system

Sample output:

pruned realm "default" (namespace "default.kukeon.io"): released 3 lease(s), retained 12

Related

• kuke init — uses kuke image load --from-docker in the local-dev bootstrap path
• Local development — first-time bootstrap with a local image