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Linkwarden on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Linkwarden is an open-source, self-hosted bookmark manager with full-page archiving (screenshot, PDF, and single-file "monolith" snapshots via a bundled headless Chrome). This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Linkwarden 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 Linkwarden 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.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets.
  • 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 Linkwarden (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 secrets (NEXTAUTH_SECRET and the database password), a Cloud Storage bucket mounted at /data/data for archived content, builds the custom container image (a thin wrapper around ghcr.io/linkwarden/linkwarden), and runs a one-shot database initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 20–35 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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~linkwarden" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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 reachable (Linkwarden has no confirmed dedicated health endpoint, so the root page is the best signal):

    curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{size_download}\n' "$SERVICE_URL"
    # expect 200 and a non-trivial byte size (a rendered page, not an empty body)

  2. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. On first visit Linkwarden shows the registration page — no pre-seeded admin credential exists in Secret Manager. Register the first account; it automatically becomes the instance owner.

  3. Verify archiving end-to-end (the real stateful test). Log in, add a bookmark (any public URL), and wait 10–30 seconds for the background archiving worker to process it. Refresh the link's detail view and confirm a screenshot/preview has been generated — this proves the DB write, the background worker, headless Chrome, and the GCS-backed storage mount are all correctly wired. If archiving never completes, see Task 5.

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). Keep min_instance_count >= 1 — the in-container background archiving worker needs to keep running between requests.

  3. Update the application version tag by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out. Linkwarden publishes a genuine latest tag upstream, so latest tracks the real upstream release (unlike some other custom-build modules in this catalogue that pin a stale version).

  4. Manage secrets:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~linkwarden"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init job

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

    INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=linkwarden --project="$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 — watch for memory spikes during archive-worker batches (concurrent headless Chrome instances). The module can provision an uptime check (when uptime_check_config.enabled = true — it defaults to false); if 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 Linkwarden releases.

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors, and confirm env vars and secrets resolved. The startup probe targets / and allows a generous window on first boot for Next.js cold start plus headless Chrome initialization. 
    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 successfully. Linkwarden's DATABASE_URL connects over the raw Cloud SQL private IP (DB_IP) on Cloud Run with sslmode=require — never the Unix-socket path (Prisma's URL-authority DSN parsing breaks on the socket directory's colons).
  • Archiving never completes / links stay un-previewed: first confirm the service itself is healthy (Task 2, step 1). If it is, this is very likely the documented Cloud Run gVisor-sandbox risk with the bundled headless Chrome — check the container logs for a Chrome/Playwright launch failure. As a fallback, set disable_browser = true (skips all browser-dependent archiving; metadata/tag/collection features keep working) and confirm whether that resolves the crash-loop — if so, this is a platform sandbox incompatibility, not a configuration error.
  • Initialisation job failed: list executions and read the failed one's logs: 
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  • 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 NEXTAUTH_SECRET after first boot).

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). Delete 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​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, GCS storage bucket, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualService responds; register the first account (becomes owner); confirm archiving completes end-to-end
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, archiving/Chrome-sandbox, init-job, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

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

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