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PeerTube on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 60–90 minutes

PeerTube is an open-source, ActivityPub-federated video hosting platform — a self-hosted YouTube alternative that federates videos, comments, and channels with other PeerTube instances (and the wider Fediverse). This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the PeerTube 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 PeerTube 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 auto-bootstrapped admin account.
  • 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.
  • Understand this module's scope (VOD/light transcoding) and when to use the GKE variant instead.
  • Tear the deployment down cleanly.

Prerequisites​

  • Services_GCP deployed in the target project (provides the VPC, Cloud SQL networking, 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 PeerTube (Cloud Run), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. If you have a real domain ready, set host now (it becomes immutable once real ActivityPub content exists) — otherwise leave it empty and the deployment will derive a working run.app-based federation domain automatically. 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, its Secret Manager secrets (PEERTUBE_SECRET, PT_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD, GCS HMAC access/secret keys), two Cloud Storage buckets (a public videos bucket and a private, FUSE-mounted data bucket), builds the custom container image via Cloud Build, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job (role/database creation plus the pg_trgm/unaccent extensions). 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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~peertube" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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 up and serving its public config endpoint:

    curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/api/v1/config" | head -c 500   # expect real JSON (instance name, signup config, etc.)

  2. Retrieve the auto-bootstrapped root admin password. Unlike some ActivityPub apps in this catalogue, PeerTube needs no manual bootstrap step — the root account is created automatically on first boot from the PT_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD secret:

    SECRET=$(gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~root-password" --format="value(name)")
    gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret="$SECRET" --project="$PROJECT"

  3. Open $SERVICE_URL/login in a browser and log in as root with the retrieved password. Confirm the instance's public federation domain (Settings → visible in the page footer / instance "About" page) matches what you expect — if you left host empty, this should show the derived run.app hostname.

  4. If you plan to run this instance in production, decide on registration policy now: enable_open_registration defaults false. Leave it that way unless you deliberately want a public sign-up instance.

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). This module defaults to cpu_always_allocated = true (PeerTube's BullMQ transcoding/federation queue needs CPU even between inbound requests) — do not flip it to request-based billing unless you understand background jobs may stall.

  3. Update the application version tag by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds via the dedicated PEERTUBE_VERSION build ARG and a new revision rolls out.

  4. Manage secrets:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~peertube"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # the 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 "$INSTANCE" --user=peertube --project="$PROJECT"

  6. Check the video storage buckets:

    gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~peertube"
    gcloud storage ls gs://<videos-bucket>/

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. Because cpu_always_allocated = true by default, expect a baseline non-zero CPU cost even at low request volume — this is expected (BullMQ background processing). If an uptime check is 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 PeerTube 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 is TCP on port 9000 (not HTTP) — if the revision never becomes ready, the container likely isn't binding the port at all (check for a database connection failure or a missing secret) rather than a slow application-level readiness check. 
    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 db-init job completed successfully. Remember Cloud Run connects over encrypted TCP to the private IP here (not a Unix socket) — see the Configuration Guide §3 for why.
  • 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"
  • Video upload / playback fails with an access error: check that the videos bucket's public access prevention is inherited, not enforced — if a manual edit reverted this, the allUsers:objectViewer grant PeerTube needs will fail: 
    gcloud storage buckets describe gs://<videos-bucket> --format='value(iamConfiguration.publicAccessPrevention)'
  • Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log — a common cause is an invalid application_version that doesn't resolve to a real chocobozzz/peertube tag.
  • 403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles, and specifically the dedicated storage service account's grant on the videos bucket.
  • Live streaming doesn't work: this is expected on this module — enable_live_streaming has no effect on Cloud Run regardless of value. RTMP ingest (ports 1935/1936) is a raw TCP protocol that Cloud Run Services cannot expose. Use PeerTube_GKE (once available) for live streaming.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for setting-specific gotchas (including the critical rule never to change host after real ActivityPub content exists, and to never disable enable_redis).

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, the videos and data 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, videos/data buckets, and runs db-init
2 — Access & verifyManualConfig endpoint responds; log in as the auto-bootstrapped root admin
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets, DB and bucket access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, init-job, storage IAM, 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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