Wallabag on GKE Autopilot — Lab Guide

Overview

Estimated time: 45–60 minutes

Wallabag is an open-source, self-hosted "read it later" article archiving app — save articles from a browser extension, bookmarklet, mobile app, or the REST API, and read them later in a clean, distraction-free view with full-text search and tagging. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Wallabag on GKE Autopilot 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 GKE module and the Google Cloud platform, not on Wallabag 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.
Connect to the GKE cluster and access the running workload, and log in with the default administrator account.
Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and storage.
Observe the workload 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, GKE Autopilot cluster, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
gcloud CLI and kubectl installed; gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login completed.
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]

Click Deploy in the RAD platform top navigation, open Wallabag (GKE) 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.
The platform deploys the workload into the GKE Autopilot cluster, provisions a Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0) database with its Secret Manager secrets (APP_SECRET and the database password), a generic Cloud Storage bucket, builds the custom container image, and runs the two-stage initialization chain: db-init (creates the database/user/grants) followed by wallabag-install (Wallabag's own installer, which creates the schema and seeds the default administrator account in one step). First deploys take roughly 15–25 minutes (Cloud SQL creation and the image build dominate).

Connect to the cluster and discover the namespace with name-agnostic filters:

CLUSTER=$(gcloud container clusters list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud container clusters get-credentials "$CLUSTER" --region="$REGION" --project="$PROJECT"

NS=$(kubectl get ns -o name | grep wallabag | head -1 | cut -d/ -f2)
echo "Cluster: $CLUSTER   Namespace: $NS"
kubectl get all -n "$NS"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]

Confirm the workload is running and find its external address:

kubectl get pods,svc -n "$NS"
EXTERNAL_IP=$(kubectl get svc -n "$NS" \
  -o jsonpath='{.items[?(@.spec.type=="LoadBalancer")].status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
echo "External IP: $EXTERNAL_IP"

Confirm the service is healthy. Wallabag redirects an unauthenticated request to the root path to its login page — expect HTTP 302, not 200:
```
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "http://${EXTERNAL_IP}/"   # expect 302
```
Open http://${EXTERNAL_IP} in a browser. Log in with Wallabag's documented default administrator credentials — username wallabag, password wallabag — seeded by the wallabag-install init job. Change this password immediately (top-right menu → your account → change password). Self-service sign-up is disabled by default, so this is the only account until you create more from the admin UI.
Save a test article to confirm end-to-end write/read against the real database: paste any article URL into the "Save a new entry" box and confirm it appears in your list with its title and content fetched. This is the surest sign the app is actually writing to Cloud SQL and not to a throwaway local file (see the Troubleshoot section for why that distinction matters).

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]

Inspect the workload — Deployment, pods, and events:

kubectl get deploy,pods -n "$NS"
kubectl describe deploy -n "$NS"

Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the workload spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual kubectl scale (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Keep max_instance_count = 1 unless you have verified Wallabag's shared-session behaviour under multiple pods.
Update the application version by changing application_version in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds FROM wallabag/wallabag:<version> and the pod is recreated. wallabag-install re-runs safely against the existing schema (it is idempotent) — no manual migration step is needed.

Manage secrets and storage:

kubectl get secrets -n "$NS"
gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~wallabag"
gcloud storage buckets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~wallabag"
kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"          # db-init and wallabag-install jobs

Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=wallabag --project="$PROJECT"

Set up the browser extension / mobile app / API access. With the admin account logged in, go to your account settings to view your API client credentials, or generate a new API client under Developer → My applications. Use http://${EXTERNAL_IP} (or your custom domain, if configured) as the server address when configuring the official Firefox/Chrome extension or a mobile client.

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]

Logs — from kubectl or the Logs Explorer:
```
kubectl logs -n "$NS" deploy/"$(kubectl get deploy -n "$NS" -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" --tail=50
```
Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="<namespace>".
Monitoring — open the GKE / Kubernetes dashboards and review pod CPU and memory utilisation, restart counts, and request metrics, plus the Cloud SQL instance dashboard. The module can provision an uptime check; if enabled, review Monitoring → Uptime checks and 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 Wallabag releases.

Pod not Ready / CrashLoopBackOff: inspect events and logs. The startup probe is TCP on port 80 (only needs nginx to bind); a 302 from the liveness probe's GET / is expected and healthy — a connection failure to Cloud SQL (via the Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1:3306) is what actually keeps the pod from becoming Ready.
```
kubectl describe pod -n "$NS" <pod>          # Events section shows scheduling/probe/mount errors
kubectl logs -n "$NS" <pod> --previous       # logs from the crashed container
kubectl exec -n "$NS" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE
```
Articles vanish after a pod restart — the #1 thing to check on this module. This is the signature symptom of Wallabag silently installing against a local SQLite file instead of MySQL: the pod boots, the health checks pass, articles save and appear to work, but everything disappears on the next pod restart or rescheduling. This happens if SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_DRIVER is ever unset or overridden — it must explicitly be pdo_mysql (the shipped entrypoint.sh sets this; do not add a conflicting SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_DRIVER via environment_variables). Use kubectl exec to check the boot log for "Configuring the SQLite database..." versus a MySQL connection line — this is exactly the kind of distinction that is only visible with shell access to the pod, not from the outside. See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls section for the full explanation.
Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret materialised into the namespace, and the db-init job completed before wallabag-install ran (it is safe to re-run; max_retries = 3).

Initialisation job failed: inspect the job and its pod logs:

kubectl get jobs -n "$NS"
kubectl logs -n "$NS" job/<db-init-or-wallabag-install-job-name>

Rollout stuck on update: check for a stuck DB connection or Auth Proxy sidecar handoff from the old pod if the new pod doesn't reach Ready promptly.
Pending pod / no external IP: check kubectl describe pod events for resource or quota issues, and confirm the LoadBalancer Service has an assigned IP.
Image pull errors: confirm the image exists in Artifact Registry and the node service account can pull it.
Can't log in with wallabag / wallabag: if the password was already changed by a previous operator, use gcloud sql connect (Task 3) or the install job's logs to confirm wallabag-install actually ran; a fresh deployment always seeds the default credentials on first successful install.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults section for setting-specific gotchas — especially the critical SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_DRIVER rule above.

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 Kubernetes workload and namespace, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, GKE cluster, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary

Task	Type	Outcome
1 — Deploy	Automated	Module deploys the GKE workload, Cloud SQL (MySQL 8.0), secrets, storage bucket, and runs the `db-init` → `wallabag-install` init chain
2 — Access & verify	Manual	Connect to the cluster; health check returns 302 to `/login`; log in with default `wallabag`/`wallabag`; save a test article
3 — Operate	Manual	Inspect workload, scale, update version, manage secrets/storage, DB access, extension/API setup
4 — Observe	Manual	Query Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and uptime check
5 — Troubleshoot	Manual	Diagnose pod, database, and init-job issues — including the silent-SQLite-fallback symptom
6 — Tear down	Automated	Delete (Trash) removes all module resources

By Dr Shiyghan Emmanuel Navti · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

Overview​

Objectives​

Prerequisites​

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]​

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]​

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]​

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]​

Summary​