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Homebox on GKE Autopilot — 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 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 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 workload, and register the first (admin) account.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage backups.
  • 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 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
export NAMESPACE="<deployment-namespace>"   # reported in the deployment Outputs
gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster-name> --region "$REGION" --project "$PROJECT"

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]​

  1. In the RAD platform, open Homebox (GKE), 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 Kubernetes workload, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL) 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.

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

    SERVICE=$(kubectl get svc -n "$NAMESPACE" -o name | grep homebox | head -1 | cut -d/ -f2)
    EXTERNAL_IP=$(kubectl get svc "$SERVICE" -n "$NAMESPACE" -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
    echo "Service: $SERVICE"
    echo "IP:      $EXTERNAL_IP"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

  1. Confirm the pod is healthy and serving:

    kubectl get pods -n "$NAMESPACE" -l app="$SERVICE"    # expect N/N Running, 0 restarts
    curl -s "http://$EXTERNAL_IP/api/v1/status" -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n'

  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 http://$EXTERNAL_IP/ in a browser (or kubectl port-forward if service_type = "ClusterIP") 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 workload and its rollout history:

    kubectl get deploy "$SERVICE" -n "$NAMESPACE"
    kubectl rollout status deploy/"$SERVICE" -n "$NAMESPACE"

  2. Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs via the RAD platform's Update flow.

  3. Update the application version tag via the RAD platform's Update flow.

  4. Manage secrets and backups:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~homebox"
    kubectl get jobs -n "$NAMESPACE"

  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:

    kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/"$SERVICE" --tail=100

  2. Monitoring — open the GKE Workloads dashboard for the deployment and review CPU/memory utilisation and replica count.

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

  • Pod unhealthy / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect pod events and logs. The startup probe targets /api/v1/status. 
    kubectl describe pod -n "$NAMESPACE" -l app="$SERVICE"
    kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/"$SERVICE" --tail=200
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE and check the container logs for the resolved HBOX_DATABASE_HOST value — on GKE it should be 127.0.0.1 (the cloud-sql-proxy sidecar).
  • Initialisation Job failed: 
    kubectl get jobs -n "$NAMESPACE"
    kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" job/<job-name>
  • 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 Workload Identity binding.

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

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule provisions the GKE workload, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL), secrets, a GCS bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualPod Ready 0 restarts; register the first (admin) account and add a test item
3 — OperateManualInspect rollout, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose pod, 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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