SearXNG on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 30–60 minutes

SearXNG is a privacy-respecting, self-hosted metasearch engine that aggregates results from 70+ search services without tracking users or serving ads. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the SearXNG 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 SearXNG 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, 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

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Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]

1. Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open SearXNG (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, generates the SEARXNG_SECRET session key in Secret Manager, and builds or mirrors the container image. Because SearXNG is fully stateless (no database, no init job), first deploys complete in a few minutes.

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="$REGION" \
     --filter="metadata.name~searxng" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
   SERVICE_URL=$(gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" \
     --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --format="value(status.url)")
   echo "Service: $SERVICE"
   echo "URL:     $SERVICE_URL"

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Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

1. Confirm the service is healthy:

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

   Expect HTTP 200. SearXNG serves its built-in health endpoint at /healthz. If you see 503, a new instance is cold-starting — wait a few seconds and retry. Cold starts are fast (under 5 seconds) because there is no database connection or schema migration on startup.

2. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser to reach the SearXNG search interface. No admin credential is required — SearXNG has no admin login.

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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 in the RAD platform and applying it via Update — 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). Note that min_instance_count is fixed at 0; the service scales to zero when idle.

3. Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD UI and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out.

4. Manage secrets:

   gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~searxng"

   The SEARXNG_SECRET is the auto-generated session key injected at runtime. It is generated once and shared across all running instances. Rotating it invalidates all active user sessions — avoid rotation unless required.

5. Inspect Cloud Run jobs (SearXNG requires no init or scheduled jobs by default, but any cron jobs you configure appear here):

   gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

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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. The module also provisions an uptime check (when enabled); confirm it is green under Monitoring → Uptime checks, and review Alerting → Policies.

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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 SearXNG releases.

• Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors, and confirm env vars and secrets resolved.

  gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100

• Empty search results / upstream engines unreachable: SearXNG must reach external search engines over the internet. If vpc_egress_setting is PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY and Cloud NAT is not configured, outbound internet traffic is blocked. Switch to ALL_TRAFFIC or add a Cloud NAT gateway.
• SEARXNG_SECRET not resolved: confirm the secret exists and the runtime service account has secretmanager.versions.access.

  gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~searxng"

• 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.

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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, Secret Manager secrets, and Artifact Registry images. SearXNG is stateless so there is no database or persistent storage to remove. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

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Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module provisions Cloud Run, generates SEARXNG_SECRET, mirrors image
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Health check passes at /healthz; search interface loads
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose revision, egress, secret, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources