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Vikunja on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Vikunja is an open-source, self-hosted to-do and project management application with lists, kanban boards, gantt charts, reminders, and team sharing via a REST API and web UI. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Vikunja 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 Vikunja 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 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. In the RAD platform, open Vikunja (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 (VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET and the database password), builds the custom container image (grafting a static busybox onto the scratch upstream image), 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="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~vikunja" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(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. Vikunja exposes a public health endpoint that returns 200 once the server has bound its port and connected to PostgreSQL:

    curl -s "$SERVICE_URL/health"   # expect a JSON object such as {"database":true,...}

  2. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. On first visit Vikunja shows the login page — click Register and create the first account. The first registered account becomes the instance owner; there is no pre-seeded admin credential in Secret Manager. After the owner account is created, disable open registration by setting VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION = "false" in environment_variables and applying it via Update.

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 / adjust CPU billing by changing the instance-count or cpu_always_allocated inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the service spec, so this is a configuration change, not a manual gcloud edit (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Note that Vikunja defaults to a single instance with always-allocated CPU because it runs an in-process reminder scheduler.

  3. Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds and a new revision rolls out. Vikunja runs any new schema migrations on startup.

  4. Manage secrets and backups:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~vikunja"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # init + scheduled backup jobs

  5. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

    INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=vikunja --project="$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, and CPU / memory utilisation. The module also provisions an uptime check; 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 Vikunja 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 /health; the entrypoint logs the resolved DB host, name, user, and public URL on boot. 
    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 (invalid port after host, pg_hba / SSL): Vikunja connects over the Cloud SQL private IP with sslmode=require, not the socket. Confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and the init job completed. A "SSL is not enabled" error means the entrypoint resolved loopback instead of the private IP.
  • 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 / container won't exec: review Cloud Build history. If the container exits immediately, confirm the custom build (busybox graft) ran — prebuilt deploys the shell-less scratch image and cannot exec the entrypoint.
  • 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 rule never to rotate VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET 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). This removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, 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, builds the image, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualHealth check passes; register the first (owner) account in the UI
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, 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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