Skip to main content

FreshRSS on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

FreshRSS is a free, self-hosted RSS and Atom feed aggregator — a lightweight, multi-user "news reader" written in PHP that exposes the Google Reader and Fever APIs for mobile clients. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the FreshRSS 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 FreshRSS 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 first-boot install and admin login.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and the database.
  • 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, NFS server, 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]​

  1. In the RAD platform, open FreshRSS (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.

  2. The platform provisions the Cloud Run service (PHP/Apache on port 80), a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database and user with the FRESHRSS_ADMIN_PASSWORD and database-password secrets in Secret Manager, an NFS volume mounted at /var/www/FreshRSS/data (no GCS bucket is created), builds the custom container image, and runs a one-shot db-init job. First deploys take roughly 15–25 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

  3. 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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~freshrss" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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]​

  1. Confirm the service is healthy. FreshRSS serves an unauthenticated /status JSON endpoint that responds once the server is up:

    curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/status"   # expect a JSON status response

  2. Retrieve the auto-generated admin password from Secret Manager:

    ADMIN_SECRET=$(gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" \
      --filter="name~freshrss AND name~ADMIN_PASSWORD" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret="$ADMIN_SECRET" --project="$PROJECT"

  3. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and log in with username admin and the password from step 2. On first request the container's entrypoint runs FreshRSS's own installer (do-install.php + create-user.php), so allow a generous first-boot window before the login page settles — this is idempotent and only runs once. After logging in, change the admin password in the FreshRSS UI — rotating the Secret Manager value alone does not re-set an already-installed account.

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

  1. 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"

  2. 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). By default min_instance_count = 0 (scale-to-zero) and max_instance_count = 1. The in-container feed-refresh cron (CRON_MIN = */15) only fires while an instance is alive, so if you need feeds to refresh on a fixed schedule rather than on next request, set min_instance_count = 1. Keep max_instance_count at 1 — a single instance owns the refresh cron and the file-based session/cache state on the NFS volume.

  3. Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out. application_version = "latest" is pinned to a known-good tag at build time — pin it explicitly for production.

  4. Manage secrets and the database:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~freshrss"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init (and import job, if enabled)
    gcloud sql backups list --instance=<instance-name> --project="$PROJECT"

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

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

  1. 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>".

  2. 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. uptime_check_config is disabled by default — enable it and review Monitoring → Uptime checks and Alerting → Policies if you want automated availability alerts.

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 FreshRSS releases.

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors. The startup probe is a TCP check on port 80; the liveness probe is an HTTP GET on / — a slow first-boot install (schema creation) can exhaust a too-tight threshold. 
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, enable_cloudsql_volume = true (Auth Proxy socket), and the db-init job completed successfully.
  • 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"
  • Config/state resets on every cold start: confirm enable_nfs = true and nfs_mount_path = /var/www/FreshRSS/data; without the NFS volume, config.php and per-user state live on ephemeral disk and are lost on every cold start.
  • Feeds not refreshing: the in-container cron only runs while an instance is alive — with min_instance_count = 0 refreshes pause until the next request wakes the service. Set min_instance_count = 1 for a reliably ticking refresh.
  • 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 & Sensible Defaults section for setting-specific gotchas (including the critical rules around enable_nfs, database_type, and immutable db_name/db_user).

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 and user, Secret Manager secrets, and the NFS-backed data directory contents. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL instance, shared NFS server, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, NFS volume, and runs db-init
2 — Access & verifyManual/status responds; log in as admin with the generated password and change it
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/DB, refresh-cron tuning
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and (optional) uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, db-init, NFS, and refresh-cron issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

By · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

Last updated on