Passbolt on Google Cloud Run

Passbolt (Community Edition) is a free, open-source, team-oriented password manager with GPG-based encryption and per-user/group credential sharing — AGPL-3.0 licensed, ~6k GitHub stars. It occupies a different niche from this catalog's Vaultwarden module: Vaultwarden is a personal/Bitwarden-compatible vault, while Passbolt is built around organization-wide GPG-encrypted credential sharing between users and groups. This module deploys the official passbolt/passbolt image on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Passbolt uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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1. Overview

Passbolt runs as a single Apache/PHP container on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Apache/PHP container, port 80, 1 vCPU / 2Gi by default, min_instance_count = 0 (scale-to-zero)
Database	Cloud SQL for MySQL (MYSQL_8_0)	Required — Passbolt is a MySQL-only CakePHP application; discrete DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_* env vars, not a single DSN
Cryptographic state	Two dedicated GCS buckets (storage, jwt)	Hold the vendor-self-generated GPG server keypair and JWT keypair — not Terraform-generated secrets
Secrets	Secret Manager	Only the database password is generated by the foundation — Passbolt itself contributes no secret at all (Passbolt_Common's secret_ids output is always empty)
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL; optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• MySQL is mandatory. database_type = "MYSQL_8_0" is fixed by Passbolt_Common; Passbolt is built on CakePHP with a MySQL-only schema.
• No server-side application secret. Unlike WordPress (multiple salts) or Laravel-family apps (APP_KEY), Passbolt has no Terraform-generated encryption key at all. Its security model is entirely client-side: the browser extension generates a GPG keypair and master password locally during setup. The server's own GPG keypair (for encrypting data to Passbolt) and its JWT keypair (API auth tokens) are both self-generated by the vendor's own entrypoint on first boot and persisted on dedicated GCS volumes — not created or rotated by Terraform.
• Two purpose-built GCS volumes, not one, and not the whole /etc/passbolt directory. storage mounts narrowly at /etc/passbolt/gpg; jwt mounts narrowly at /etc/passbolt/jwt. Mounting a single volume over all of /etc/passbolt would shadow baked-in config/PHP files (app.php, bootstrap.php, routes.php) that live directly in that directory in the image — the same class of bug this catalog previously hit with Cloudreve.
• HTTPS = "on" is always injected. Passbolt's bootstrap.php has $trustProxy = false hardcoded, so it does not honor X-Forwarded-Proto by default — but it does check the literal env('HTTPS') value directly. Since Cloud Run terminates TLS at the edge and forwards plain HTTP to the container, this static override makes Passbolt generate https:// URLs correctly in emails and absolute links.
• enable_cloudsql_volume defaults to false at this module's variable level — asymmetric with Passbolt_GKE, where it defaults true (both match Passbolt_Common's own default of true). Set it explicitly to true for socket-based MySQL connections on Cloud Run.
• No first-visit web setup wizard. The only way an admin account exists is via the admin-bootstrap init job, which prints a one-time setup URL to Cloud Logging for the operator to open in a Passbolt-compatible browser extension.
• No Redis. enable_redis = false by default — Passbolt has no Redis integration used by this module.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the Passbolt service

• Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for MySQL

Passbolt stores all application data — users, groups, folders, encrypted password resources, sharing permissions — in a managed Cloud SQL MySQL 8.0 instance. The database connection uses Passbolt's own discrete env var names (DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST/_USERNAME/_PASSWORD/_DATABASE, confirmed against the vendor's own /passbolt/env.sh), aliased from the Foundation's standard DB_* values by the Application Module.

• Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --database=<db-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage — the GPG and JWT keypair volumes

Two GCS buckets are provisioned by Passbolt_Common and mounted via GCS Fuse: storage at /etc/passbolt/gpg, jwt at /etc/passbolt/jwt. These are not generic upload/media buckets — they hold the vendor-self-generated server GPG keypair and JWT keypair, both generated once on first boot and reused on every subsequent boot. Losing either bucket invalidates every credential Passbolt has encrypted server-side and every issued JWT session.

• Console: Cloud Storage → find the two buckets (names include storage and jwt suffixes).
• CLI:

  gsutil ls -p "$PROJECT" | grep passbolt
  gsutil ls gs://<storage-bucket-name>/    # expect serverkey.asc, serverkey_private.asc

D. Secret Manager

Passbolt itself contributes no secret — the only Secret Manager entry related to this deployment is the database password, managed by the Foundation.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

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

E. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'

See App_CloudRun.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging — including the admin-bootstrap init job's one-time setup URL output. Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies.

• Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

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3. Passbolt Application Behaviour

• The 2-stage initialization job chain, and why the second job is genuinely non-trivial. Passbolt_Common defines two ordered Cloud Run Jobs, both with execute_on_apply = true:

  1. db-init (mysql:8.0-debian) — creates the MySQL role and database (the shared catalog-wide db-init.sh, caching_sha2_password-safe).

  2. admin-bootstrap (passbolt/passbolt:<version>, depends_on_jobs = ["db-init"]) — registers the initial admin account.

     Cloud Run Jobs invoke a container's command/args directly, bypassing the vendor's own /docker-entrypoint.sh chain entirely — so a bare cake passbolt register_user on a freshly-provisioned container fails with an Internal Error 500, because the GPG server keypair (normally generated during the vendor entrypoint's own boot sequence) doesn't exist yet, and the schema hasn't been installed either. The job instead sources the vendor's own entrypoint functions (/passbolt/entrypoint.sh, /passbolt/env.sh, /passbolt/deprecated_paths.sh), generates/imports the GPG server keypair if missing, generates a self-signed SSL cert if missing, runs the vendor's own install() function (which also handles JWT keypair generation and the database schema install/migrate), and only then runs cake passbolt register_user -u <admin_email> -f <admin_first_name> -l <admin_last_name> -r admin — without the -q/quiet flag, so the one-time setup URL is printed and lands in Cloud Logging. Confirmed against the real vendor /passbolt/entrypoint.sh source. Idempotent: gpg_gen_key/install() no-op once the keys and schema already exist from a prior run.

• No first-visit setup wizard, and a genuinely different bootstrap model from most apps in this catalog. Passbolt requires the client (a browser extension) to generate its own GPG keypair and master password — there is no server-side password to seed and nothing to retrieve from Secret Manager. Retrieve the one-time setup URL instead:

  gcloud logging read \
    'resource.type="cloud_run_job" AND resource.labels.job_name~admin-bootstrap' \
    --project "$PROJECT" --limit 20 --format='value(textPayload)' | grep '/setup/start/'

• Health endpoint. GET /healthcheck/status.json returns an unauthenticated 200 with {"header":{"status":"success",...},"body":"OK"} once ready — confirmed via local container testing and live deployment. Both the startup and liveness probes target this path by default.

• Inspect job execution:

  gcloud run jobs list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run jobs executions list --job <job-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

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4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for Passbolt are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 1 — Project & Identity

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the service and regional resources.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment

Variable	Default	Description
tenant_deployment_id	demo	Short suffix that makes resource names unique per environment. Use a distinct value (e.g. cr) from any co-deployed Passbolt_GKE (gke) to avoid a naming collision.
support_users	[]	Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels	{}	Labels applied to all resources.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	passbolt	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	Passbolt	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
application_version	latest	passbolt/passbolt image tag.
admin_email	admin@example.com	Email for the admin account registered by admin-bootstrap.
admin_first_name / admin_last_name	Admin / User	Name fields for the initial admin account.
enable_gcs_storage_volume	true	Mounts the storage (GPG) and jwt GCS volumes. Keep enabled.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_image_source	prebuilt	Deploys the official image directly; Passbolt only supports the prebuilt image.
cpu_limit	1000m	1 vCPU.
memory_limit	2Gi	Memory limit — PHP 8.x + Apache.
min_instance_count	0	Scale-to-zero by default.
max_instance_count	1	Single instance by default.
container_port	80	Passbolt (Apache) listens here.
execution_environment	gen2	Required execution environment.
enable_cloudsql_volume	false	Asymmetric with Passbolt_GKE's default of true. Set true for socket-based MySQL connections — Passbolt's DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST accepts the socket directory directly.
cloudsql_volume_mount_path	/cloudsql	Container path for the Auth Proxy socket.
container_protocol	http1	"http1" or "h2c".
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirrors the Passbolt image into Artifact Registry.

Group 5 — Access & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	Traffic ingress control.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	VPC egress control.
enable_iap	false	Identity-Aware Proxy.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. HTTPS = "on" and (when known) APP_FULL_BASE_URL are set automatically.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name. Passbolt itself contributes none.

Group 11 — Cloud Storage

Variable	Default	Description
gcs_volumes	[]	Additional GCS buckets to mount, on top of the two Passbolt provisions automatically (storage, jwt).
enable_nfs	true	Provisions a Filestore volume. Not used by Passbolt's own persistence model — the GPG/JWT keypairs live on dedicated GCS volumes and everything else is in MySQL. Harmless generic default.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	MYSQL_8_0	Cloud SQL engine. Passbolt requires MySQL.
db_name	passbolt	MySQL database name.
db_user	passbolt	MySQL application user.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
db_host_env_var_name / db_user_env_var_name / db_name_env_var_name / db_password_env_var_name	DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST / _USERNAME / _DATABASE / _PASSWORD	Set by passbolt.tf, not user-facing — Passbolt reads discrete CakePHP/PDO env var names, not the Foundation's standard DB_* names.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty for Passbolt_Common's default 2-job chain (db-init → admin-bootstrap). A non-empty list replaces it entirely.
cron_jobs	[]	Passbolt has no platform-scheduled recurring tasks by default.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /healthcheck/status.json, 20s delay, 20 retries	Passbolt's unauthenticated status endpoint.
liveness_probe	HTTP /healthcheck/status.json, 60s delay	Same endpoint.
uptime_check_config	{ enabled=false, path="/" }	Cloud Monitoring uptime check.

Group 21 — Redis

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Not used by Passbolt. Present for platform compatibility.

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Standard App_CloudRun VPC-SC integration — see App_CloudRun.

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5. Outputs

Returned on a successful deployment — the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Cloud Run service name.
service_url	Default run.app URL of the service.
service_location	Region the service runs in.
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_user	Application database name / user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port.
storage_buckets	The storage (GPG) and jwt GCS buckets.
container_image	Deployed image.
initialization_jobs	Names of the created init jobs (db-init, admin-bootstrap).
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / github_repository_url	CI/CD status.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_mode	VPC-SC status.

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6. Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults

Risk: Critical (data loss / outage / security) — High (service degraded) — Medium (cost or partial degradation) — Low (minor).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_CloudRun foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time. Invalid configuration fails the plan with a clear, named error before any resource is created.

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
database_type	MYSQL_8_0	Critical	Passbolt's CakePHP schema is MySQL-only — any other engine breaks startup entirely.
enable_gcs_storage_volume	true	Critical	Disabling loses the persistent volumes for the self-generated GPG server keypair and JWT keypair — every credential Passbolt has encrypted server-side, and every issued JWT session, becomes unrecoverable on the next container restart.
initialization_jobs order (db-init → admin-bootstrap)	Leave [] unless you fully understand the dependency	Critical	The admin-bootstrap job's replication of the vendor's own GPG-key-generation/schema-install sequence is load-bearing — a naive replacement job that just runs cake passbolt register_user directly fails with an Internal Error because the GPG server keypair and schema don't exist yet.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true (note: defaults false on this variant)	Medium	Passbolt's DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST works over the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy Unix socket directly; leaving this at its Cloud-Run-side default of false uses direct TCP instead, which still works but forgoes the socket's TLS termination and matches neither Passbolt_Common's own default nor the GKE variant.
admin_email / admin_first_name / admin_last_name	Set intentionally before first deploy	Medium	These seed the one and only admin account the admin-bootstrap job creates; there is no in-app way to change them after the fact except through Passbolt's own admin UI once logged in.
No admin password to lose track of	—	—	Unlike most apps in this catalog, there is no Secret-Manager-held admin credential to retrieve. If the one-time setup URL is missed and expires, the fix is deleting and re-running the admin-bootstrap job (it is idempotent for the GPG/JWT/schema steps, but register_user itself may need a fresh invocation for a new URL — check Passbolt's own CLI docs for re-issuing a setup link).

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — service identity, scaling and concurrency, ingress and load balancing, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_CloudRun. Passbolt-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Passbolt_Common.