FreeScout on GKE Autopilot — 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 GKE Autopilot 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 GKE 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.
Connect to the GKE cluster and access the running workload, including the seeded first-run admin account.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and storage.
Observe the workload 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, GKE Autopilot cluster, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
gcloud CLI and kubectl installed; gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login completed.
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]

Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open FreeScout (GKE) from the Platform Modules list to start configuration, 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 deploys the workload into the GKE Autopilot cluster, provisions 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).

Connect to the cluster and discover the namespace with name-agnostic filters:

CLUSTER=$(gcloud container clusters list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud container clusters get-credentials "$CLUSTER" --region="$REGION" --project="$PROJECT"

NS=$(kubectl get ns -o name | grep freescout | head -1 | cut -d/ -f2)
echo "Cluster: $CLUSTER   Namespace: $NS"
kubectl get all -n "$NS"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

Confirm the workload is running and find its external address:

kubectl get pods,svc -n "$NS"
EXTERNAL_IP=$(kubectl get svc -n "$NS" \
  -o jsonpath='{.items[?(@.spec.type=="LoadBalancer")].status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
echo "External IP: $EXTERNAL_IP"

Confirm the service is responding. FreeScout has no dedicated JSON health endpoint — a healthy pod returns the login page (HTTP 200) or a redirect to it on GET /:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "http://${EXTERNAL_IP}/"   # expect 200 (or 302 to login)
```
FreeScout seeds a first-run administrator automatically — there is no manual sign-up step. Retrieve the generated admin password from Secret Manager and sign in with the default ADMIN_EMAIL (admin@techequity.cloud unless overridden):
```
ADMIN_SECRET=$(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="$PROJECT"
```
Open http://${EXTERNAL_IP} 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 workload — deployment, pods, and PVC/storage state:

kubectl get deploy,pods,pvc -n "$NS"
kubectl describe deploy -n "$NS"

Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the workload spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual kubectl scale (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). FreeScout defaults to min_instance_count = 1 and max_instance_count = 1 (always at least one pod, keeping the help-desk endpoint reachable) — keep max at 1 unless multi-pod behaviour on shared NFS/DB has been confirmed safe. Session affinity (ClientIP) is set by default to keep a client's requests on the same pod.
Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update. Because FreeScout is NFS-backed, the foundation uses a Recreate rollout strategy — the old pod is fully stopped before the new one starts (avoiding two pods contending on the same NFS volume and database), so expect a short outage during an update rather than a zero-downtime rolling replacement. The tiredofit/freescout image runs php artisan migrate --force on every container start, so schema changes apply automatically on boot.
Manage secrets and storage:
```
kubectl get secrets -n "$NS"
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~freescout"
kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"          # db-init and any scheduled 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 kubectl or the Logs Explorer:
```
kubectl logs -n "$NS" deploy/"$(kubectl get deploy -n "$NS" -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" --tail=50
```
Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="<namespace>".
Monitoring — open the GKE / Kubernetes dashboards and review pod CPU and memory utilisation, restart counts, and request metrics. The module can provision an uptime check (when enabled); review Monitoring → Uptime checks and 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.

Pod not Ready / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect events and logs. 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.
```
kubectl describe pod -n "$NS" <pod>          # Events section shows scheduling/probe/mount errors
kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> --previous       # logs from the crashed container
```
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 pod — read the container logs above for the Laravel/PDO error.
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE and that the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar is healthy — GKE reaches MySQL over the proxy's loopback address (127.0.0.1:3306), not the private IP directly.
```
kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> -c cloud-sql-proxy
```

db-init job failed: inspect the job and its pod logs:

kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"
kubectl logs -n "$NS" job/<job-name>

Update appears "stuck": because FreeScout uses a Recreate rollout (NFS-backed), the old pod fully terminates before the new one is scheduled — a brief 0/1 Ready window during an update is expected, not a hang.
Attachments/uploads disappearing: confirm enable_nfs = true (the default) and check kubectl get pvc,pv -n "$NS" — without NFS, uploaded files are not shared across pods or rescheduling.
Pending pod / no external IP: check kubectl describe pod events for resource or quota issues, and confirm the LoadBalancer Service has an assigned IP.
Image pull errors: confirm the image exists in Artifact Registry and the node service account can pull it.

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 Kubernetes workload and namespace, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, GKE cluster, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module deploys the GKE workload, Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0), Filestore NFS, secrets, storage bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Connect to the cluster; health check passes; log in with the seeded admin account and change the password
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect workload, scale, update version (Recreate rollout), manage secrets/storage (never rotate `APP_KEY`), DB access
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose pod, migration, database, init-job, scheduling, and image-pull 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​