FreeScout on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

FreeScout is a free, self-hosted help desk and shared-mailbox platform built on Laravel (PHP) — it turns shared email inboxes into a collaborative ticket queue with conversations, tags, saved replies, and a REST API. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the FreeScout on Cloud Run module on Google Cloud: deploy it, access and verify it, run it day-to-day, observe it, diagnose common problems, and tear it down.

The lab focuses on operating the Cloud Run module and the Google Cloud platform, not on FreeScout product features. For the complete list of provisioned services and every configuration input (organised by group), see the Configuration Guide — this lab deliberately does not duplicate that detail so it stays accurate over time.

Objectives

By the end of this lab you will be able to:

Deploy the module from the RAD platform and locate the resources it provisions.
Access and verify the running service, including the seeded first-run admin account.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and backups.
Observe the service with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring.
Diagnose and resolve the most common deployment and runtime issues.
Tear the deployment down cleanly.

Prerequisites

Services_GCP deployed in the target project (provides the VPC, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
gcloud CLI authenticated: gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login.
Project Owner (or equivalent) IAM on the project.
RAD platform access with permission to deploy modules into the project.

Set these shell variables once; every task below reuses them:

export PROJECT="<your-gcp-project-id>"
export REGION="us-central1"          # the region you deploy into

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]

In the RAD platform, open FreeScout (Cloud Run), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. Review the estimated cost (if credits are enabled) and click Deploy, which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.
The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL for MySQL 8.0 database with its Secret Manager secrets (the Laravel APP_KEY, the seeded ADMIN_PASS, and the database password), a Filestore NFS mount for attachments (enabled by default), a Cloud Storage uploads bucket, builds the thin custom container image (FROM tiredofit/freescout), and runs a one-shot database initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

When it completes, discover the resources with name-agnostic filters (so the commands keep working regardless of the deployment suffix):

SERVICE=$(gcloud run services list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
  --filter="metadata.name~freescout" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
SERVICE_URL=$(gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" \
  --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --format="value(status.url)")
echo "Service: $SERVICE"
echo "URL:     $SERVICE_URL"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

Confirm the service is responding. FreeScout has no dedicated JSON health endpoint — a healthy service returns the login page (HTTP 200) or a redirect to it on GET /:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/"   # expect 200 (or 302 to login)
```
FreeScout seeds a first-run administrator automatically — there is no manual sign-up step. Retrieve the generated admin password from Secret Manager and sign in with the default ADMIN_EMAIL (admin@techequity.cloud unless overridden):
```
ADMIN_SECRET=$(gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" \
  --filter="name~freescout AND name~admin" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret="$ADMIN_SECRET" --project="$PROJECT"
```
Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and log in with that email/password. Change the password in the UI immediately — the generated value only lives in Secret Manager and this app-side change gives you a human-owned credential.

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]

Inspect the service and its revisions (each deploy creates an immutable revision; traffic shifts to the newest healthy one):

gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the service spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual gcloud edit (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). FreeScout defaults to min_instance_count = 0 (scale-to-zero; cold starts add several seconds) and max_instance_count = 1 — keep max at 1 unless shared-storage/session handling across instances has been confirmed safe.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and the tiredofit/freescout entrypoint runs php artisan migrate --force on the next container start, so schema changes apply automatically on boot.
Manage secrets and backups:
```
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~freescout"
gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init + any scheduled backup jobs
```
Never rotate the APP_KEY secret after first boot — it encrypts session data and encrypted database columns (stored mailbox credentials, OAuth tokens); rotating it permanently invalidates all previously encrypted data.

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~freescout" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=freescout --project="$PROJECT"

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer:
```
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50
```
Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="cloud_run_revision" AND resource.labels.service_name="<service>".
Monitoring — open the Cloud Run dashboard for the service and review request count, request latency (P50/P95/P99), instance count (scaling behaviour), and CPU / memory utilisation. The module can provision an uptime check (when enabled); confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks, and review Alerting → Policies.

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]

Durable techniques for the failure modes you are most likely to hit. These are platform-level diagnostics and do not change with FreeScout releases.

Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors. The startup probe is TCP on the container port (30 s delay, 20 failures) and the liveness probe is HTTP GET / (300 s initial delay) — allow several minutes on first boot while migrations run.
```
gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
```
Migration failures on boot: php artisan migrate --force runs on every container start (there is no separate migration job); a failed migration shows up as a crash loop on the newest revision — read the container logs above for the Laravel/PDO error.
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE and reachable — Cloud Run connects over the instance private IP on TCP port 3306 (enable_cloudsql_volume = false by default), not a Unix socket.

db-init job failed: list executions and read the failed one's logs:

gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
  --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

Attachments/uploads disappearing: confirm enable_nfs = true (the default) — without NFS, uploaded files do not survive container recycling or scale-to-zero.
Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log.
403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for setting-specific gotchas (including the critical rule never to rotate APP_KEY after first boot, and why database_type must stay MYSQL_8_0).

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]

On the Deployments page, open the deployment and click the Trash icon (Delete). Delete runs terraform destroy and is irreversible (the deployment record is retained for history). If a deployment is stuck and the RAD platform can no longer manage it (for example after manual changes that conflict with the Terraform state), use Purge instead — it removes the deployment from RAD's records without destroying the cloud resources (it makes RAD forget the project). This removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0), Filestore NFS, secrets, storage bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes; log in with the seeded admin account and change the password
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups (never rotate `APP_KEY`), DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, migration, database, init-job, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources

By Dr Shiyghan Emmanuel Navti · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

Overview​

Objectives​

Prerequisites​

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]​

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]​

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]​

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]​

Summary​