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Outline on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Outline is a fast, collaborative, Notion-style team knowledge base and wiki with real-time editing and powerful search. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Outline on Cloud Run module on Google Cloud: deploy it, wire up the required authentication provider, 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 Outline 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.
  • Verify the running service and configure the required OIDC authentication provider.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and 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. Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open Outline (Cloud Run) 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.

  2. The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (DB password plus Outline's SECRET_KEY and UTILS_SECRET), a Filestore NFS share for uploaded files, a dedicated storage GCS bucket, builds the custom container image via Cloud Build, 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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~outline" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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. Outline's health path is /, which responds once the entrypoint has connected to PostgreSQL, run the Sequelize migrations, and connected to Redis (allow 60+ seconds on a fresh deploy / cold start):

    curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL/"

  2. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. Expect an empty login page — this is the module's most important first-run fact, not a failure: the OIDC_* variables ship intentionally blank, and without a configured identity provider Outline registers zero auth providers. The service is healthy; sign-in requires the next step.

  3. Configure the required OIDC provider. Create an OAuth client at your IdP (e.g. Google: APIs & Services → Credentials) with $SERVICE_URL/auth/oidc.callback as an authorized redirect URI — the callback must be on the same host as the injected URL. Then wire the endpoints:

    gcloud run services update "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
      --update-env-vars="OIDC_AUTH_URI=https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth,OIDC_TOKEN_URI=https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token,OIDC_USERINFO_URI=https://openidconnect.googleapis.com/v1/userinfo,OIDC_USERNAME_CLAIM=email"

    Bind the client credentials as secrets. Gotcha: OIDC_CLIENT_ID and OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET exist as plain empty env vars, so gcloud refuses a direct secret conversion ("already set with a different type") — remove first, then bind:

    gcloud run services update "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
      --remove-env-vars=OIDC_CLIENT_ID,OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET
    gcloud run services update "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
      --update-secrets="OIDC_CLIENT_ID=<client-id-secret>:latest,OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=<client-secret-secret>:latest"

    Reload the login page — your provider button appears; the first user to sign in creates the workspace. The DB password secret can be retrieved if needed:

    DB_SECRET=$(gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" \
      --filter="name~outline" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret="$DB_SECRET" --project="$PROJECT"

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). The default is scale-to-zero (min = 0, max = 1); set min = 1 if cold starts bother your editors.

  3. Update the application version by changing the version input via Update on the deployment details page; Cloud Build rebuilds the custom image and a new revision rolls out — the entrypoint runs any pending Sequelize migrations on start.

  4. Manage secrets, storage, and jobs:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~outline"   # DB password, SECRET_KEY, UTILS_SECRET
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"       # db-init + backup jobs
    gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~outline"

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

    INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=outline --project="$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>". On startup, look for Assembled DATABASE_URL, Database is ready., and the Sequelize migration output.

  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. An uptime check can be enabled via uptime_check_config (off by default); when on, 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 Outline releases.

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: the startup probe allows 60 seconds plus six retries for the entrypoint to wait for PostgreSQL and run migrations. Inspect the latest revision and its logs before concluding the service has failed: 
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
  • Empty login page (the app-specific one): this is not a deployment failure — the OIDC_* placeholders are blank until you configure an IdP (Task 2). If a provider is configured but login loops or errors, verify the redirect URI is <URL>/auth/oidc.callback on the exact host in the injected URL: 
    gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --region="$REGION" \
      --format="json(spec.template.spec.containers[0].env)" | grep -A1 '"URL"'
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and the db-init job completed successfully. The connection uses the Auth Proxy socket — enable_cloudsql_volume must stay true.
  • 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"
  • Redis errors / reconnect loop in logs: Outline requires Redis. Verify enable_redis = true and that the shared NFS host (which co-hosts Redis) is running, or that redis_host points at a reachable endpoint.
  • NFS mount / uploads not persisting: verify enable_nfs = true, the execution environment is gen2, and nfs_mount_path is /var/lib/outline/data.
  • Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log. This is a custom-build module — the upstream image lacks the entrypoint that assembles DATABASE_URL/REDIS_URL/URL and runs migrations.
  • 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 (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, Secret Manager secrets (DB password, SECRET_KEY, UTILS_SECRET), GCS buckets (including the storage bucket), Filestore NFS share, 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), NFS, GCS bucket, secrets, builds the image, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualHealth check passes; configure the required OIDC provider and complete first sign-in
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups/storage, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and optional uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, OIDC, database, init-job, Redis, NFS, 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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