Rootful evidence must reject non-running systemd states and prove no unrelated container runtime survives. Require exact manager state, mask distro containerd, recheck readiness after scenarios, and remove the complete Podman socket boundary.
The disposable host reached multi-user.target in a degraded state because distro Podman housekeeping used overlay storage inside the outer container. Mask unused units, force VFS for explicit daemons, and fail closed on systemd unit failures so retained rootful evidence remains trustworthy.
rcourtman