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Homebox on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 30–60 minutes

Homebox is an open-source, self-hosted home inventory and organization system — track items, attach photos, and organize by location. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Homebox 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 Homebox 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, and register the first (admin) account.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage 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]​

  1. In the RAD platform, open Homebox (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, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager password secret, the HBOX_AUTH_API_KEY_PEPPER secret, a data GCS bucket, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 15–25 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

  3. When it completes, discover the resources with name-agnostic filters:

    SERVICE=$(gcloud run services list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~homebox" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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 and serving:

    curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/api/v1/status" -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n'   # expect 200

  2. Homebox has no seeded default admin account — it uses open self-registration. The first person to submit the "Register" form on the fresh instance becomes the admin. There is no credential to retrieve.

  3. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser and click Register. Create the first account — it automatically becomes the admin. Then add a test item (with a location) to confirm the database write path. Once you've confirmed the admin account exists, consider setting HBOX_OPTIONS_ALLOW_REGISTRATION=false via the RAD platform's Update flow to close public signups.

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

  1. Inspect the service and its revisions:

    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 — Homebox has no cross-instance coordination concern (no cache, no queue), so raising max_instance_count is safe.

  3. Update the application version tag via the RAD platform's Update flow — Homebox publishes a genuine latest tag, or pin an explicit version (e.g. v0.15.0).

  4. Manage secrets and backups:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~homebox"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

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

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

  1. Logs:

    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50

  2. Monitoring — open the Cloud Run dashboard for the service and review request count, latency, instance count, and CPU/memory utilisation. The module can provision an uptime check (disabled by default); if enabled, confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks.

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs. The startup probe targets /api/v1/status. 
    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, and the initialisation job completed. Since Homebox reads discrete HBOX_DATABASE_* vars, check the container logs for which host/port it resolved.
  • Initialisation job failed: 
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  • Someone else registered first / can't create the admin account: Homebox's open self-registration means whoever submits the "Register" form first on a reachable instance becomes the admin. If this happens unexpectedly, use Homebox's own account-recovery flow, or redeploy onto a fresh database if the instance was never meant to be public.
  • 403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for setting-specific gotchas.

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. If a deployment is stuck and the RAD platform can no longer manage it, use Purge instead — it removes the deployment from RAD's records without destroying the cloud resources. This removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, the GCS bucket, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, a GCS bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualHealth check passes; register the first (admin) account and add a test item
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, init-job, and registration issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

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

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