I have a bridge device set up with systemd, br0, that replaces my primary ethernet eth0. With the br0 bridge device, Incus is able to create containers/VMs that have unique MAC addresses that are then assigned IP addresses by my DHCP server. (sudo incus profile device add <profileName> eth0 nic nictype=bridged parent=br0) Additionally, the containers/VMs can directly contact the host, unlike with MACVLAN.

With Docker, I can’t see a way to get the same feature-set with their options. I have MACVLAN working, but it is even shoddier than the Incus implementation as it can’t do DHCP without a poorly-maintained plugin. And the host cannot contact the container due to the MACVLAN method (precludes running a container like a DNS server that the host server would want to rely on).

Is there a way I’ve missed with the bridge driver to specify a specific parent device? Can I make another bridge device off of br0 and bind to that one host-like? Searching really fell apart when I got to this point.

Also, if someone knows how to match Incus’ networking capability with Podman, I would love to hear that. I’m eyeing trying to move to Podman Quadlets (with Debian 13) after I’ve got myself well-versed with Docker (and its vast support infrastructure to learn from).

Hoping someone has solved this and wants to share their powers. I can always put a Docker/podman inside of an Incus container, but I’d like to avoid onioning if possible.