Troubleshoot Cloud Functions (1st gen)

This document shows you how to troubleshoot error messages and resolve issues when using Cloud Functions (1st gen).

Deployment

This section lists issues that you might encounter with deployment and provides suggestions for how to fix each of them. Many of the issues you might encounter during deployment are related to roles and permissions or incorrect configuration.

Deployment service account missing Pub/Sub permissions when deploying an event-driven function

The Cloud Functions service uses the Cloud Functions service agent service account (service-PROJECT_NUMBER@gcf-admin-robot.iam.gserviceaccount.com) for performing administrative actions. By default, this account is assigned the Cloud Functions cloudfunctions.serviceAgent role. To deploy event-driven functions, the Cloud Functions service must access Pub/Sub to configure topics and subscriptions. If the role assigned to the service account changes and the appropriate permissions aren't updated, the Cloud Functions service can't access Pub/Sub and the deployment fails.

The error message

Failed to configure trigger PubSub projects/PROJECT_ID/topics/FUNCTION_NAME

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) OperationError: code=13, message=Failed to configure trigger PubSub projects/PROJECT_ID/topics/FUNCTION_NAME

The solution

You can reset your service account to the default cloudfunctions.serviceAgent role.

Default runtime service account does not exist

When a user-managed service account is not specified, Cloud Functions (1st gen) uses the App Engine service account by default. Deployments fail if you delete the default account without specifying a user-managed service account.

The error message

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) ResponseError: status=[400], code=[Ok], message=[Default service account 'test-project-356312@appspot.gserviceaccount.com' doesn't exist. Please recreate this account or specify a different account. Please visit https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/troubleshooting for in-depth troubleshooting documentation.]

The solution

To resolve this issue, follow any of these solutions:

• Specify a user-managed runtime service account when deploying your function.

• Recreate the default service account PROJECT_ID@appspot.gserviceaccount.com for your project.

• Undelete the default service account.

User missing permissions for runtime service account while deploying a function

Every function is associated with a service account that serves as its identity when the function accesses other resources. This runtime service account can be the default service account or a user-managed service account. For Cloud Functions to use a runtime service account, the deployer must have the iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permission on that service account. A user who creates a non-default runtime service account is automatically granted this permission, but other deployers must have this permission granted by a user with the correct permissions.

A user who has been assigned the Project Viewer, Cloud Functions Developer, or Cloud Functions Admin role must additionally be assigned the iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permission on the runtime service account.

The error message

You must have the iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permission on the selected service account. To obtain this permission, you can grant a role that includes it like the Service Account User role, on the project.

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) ResponseError: status=[403], code=[Ok], message=[Caller USER is missing permission 'iam.serviceaccounts.actAs' on service account PROJECT_ID@appspot.gserviceaccount.com. Grant the role 'roles/iam.serviceAccountUser' to the caller on the service account PROJECT_ID@appspot.gserviceaccount.com. You can do that by running 'gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding
PROJECT_ID@appspot.gserviceaccount.com --member MEMBER --role roles/iam.serviceAccountUser' where MEMBER has a prefix like 'user:' or 'serviceAccount:'.

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) ResponseError: status=[403], code=[Ok], message=[Caller USER is missing permission 'iam.serviceaccounts.actAs' on service account SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME@PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com. Grant the role 'roles/iam.serviceAccountUser' to the caller on the service account SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME@PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com. You can do that by running 'gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME@PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com --member MEMBER --role roles/iam.serviceAccountUser' where MEMBER has a prefix like 'user:' or 'serviceAccount:'.

The solution

Assign the user roles/iam.serviceAccountUser role on the default or user-managed service account. This role includes the iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permission.

Cloud Functions Service Agent service account missing project bucket permissions while deploying a function

Cloud Functions can only be triggered by events from Cloud Storage buckets in the same Google Cloud Project. In addition, the Cloud Functions Service Agent service account (service-PROJECT_NUMBER@gcf-admin-robot.iam.gserviceaccount.com) needs a cloudfunctions.serviceAgent role on your project.

The error message

Deployment failure: Insufficient permissions to (re)configure a trigger
(permission denied for bucket BUCKET_ID). Please, give owner permissions
to the editor role of the bucket and try again.

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) OperationError: code=7, message=Insufficient
permissions to (re)configure a trigger (permission denied for bucket BUCKET_ID).
Please, give owner permissions to the editor role of the bucket and try again.

The solution

To resolve this error, reset the Service Agent service account to the default role.

User with Project Editor role can't make a function public

The Project Editor role has broad permissions to manage resources within a project, but it doesn't inherently grant the ability to make Cloud Functions public. You must grant the cloudfunctions.functions.setIamPolicy` permission to the user or the service deploying the function.

The error message

 ERROR: (gcloud.functions.add-iam-policy-binding) ResponseError: status=[403], code=[Forbidden], message=[Permission 'cloudfunctions.functions.setIamPolicy' denied on resource 'projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION/functions/FUNCTION_NAME (or resource may not exist).]

The solution

To resolve this error, follow any of these solutions:

• Assign the deployer either the Project Owner or the Cloud Functions Admin role, both of which contain the cloudfunctions.functions.setIamPolicy permission.

• Grant the permission manually by creating a custom role.

• Check if domain restricted sharing is enforced on the project.

Function deployment fails when using Resource Location Restriction organization policy

If your organization uses a Resource Location Restriction policy, it will restrict function deployment in the regions restricted by the policy. In the Google Cloud console, the restricted region won't be available from the region drop-down while deploying a function.

The error message

  ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) ResponseError: status=[400], code=[Ok], message=[The request has violated one or more Org Policies. Please refer to the respective violations for more information. violations {
    type: "constraints/gcp.resourceLocations"
    subject: "orgpolicy:projects/PROJECT_ID"
    description: "Constraint constraints/gcp.resourceLocations violated for projects/PROJECT_ID attempting GenerateUploadUrlActionV1 with location set to RESTRICTED_LOCATION. See https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/org-policy-constraints for more information."
  }

The solution

Add or remove locations from the allowed_values or denied_values lists of the resource locations constraint for successful deployment.

Function deployment fails while executing function's global scope

This error indicates that there was a problem with your code. The deployment pipeline finished deploying the function, but failed at the last step - sending a health check to the function. This health check is meant to execute a function's global scope, which could be throwing an exception, crashing, or timing out. The global scope is where you commonly load in libraries and initialize clients.

The error message

Deployment failure: Function failed on loading user code. This is likely due to a bug in the user code.

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) OperationError: code=3, message=Function
failed on loading user code. This is likely due to a bug in the user code.

In Cloud Logging logs:

  "Function failed on loading user code. This is likely due to a bug in the user code."

The solution

To resolve this issue, follow any of these solutions:

• For a more detailed error message, review your function's build logs, and your function's runtime logs.

• If it is unclear why your function failed to execute its global scope, consider temporarily moving the code into the request invocation, using lazy initialization of the global variables. This lets you add extra log statements around your client libraries, which could be timing out on their instantiation (especially if they are calling other services), or crashing or throwing exceptions altogether.

• Increase the function timeout.

• The source code must contain an entry point function that has been correctly specified in the deployment, either through the console or gcloud.

User with Viewer role cannot deploy a function

Users with either the Project Viewer or Cloud Functions Viewer role have read-only access to functions and function details, and can't deploy new functions. The Create function feature is grayed out in the Google Cloud console with the following error:

The error message

ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) PERMISSION_DENIED: Permission
'cloudfunctions.functions.sourceCodeSet' denied on resource
'projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/LOCATION` (or resource may not exist)

The solution

Assign the user Cloud Functions Developer role.

Serving

This section lists serving issues that you might encounter, and provides suggestions for how to fix each of them.

Serving permission error due to the function requiring authentication

HTTP functions without Allow unauthenticated invocations enabled restrict access to end users and service accounts that don't have appropriate permissions.

Visiting the Cloud Functions URL in a browser doesn't add an authentication header automatically.

The error message

HTTP Error Response code: 403 Forbidden

HTTP Error Response body:

Error: Forbidden Your client does not have permission
to get URL /FUNCTION_NAME from this server.

The solution

To resolve this error, follow either of these solutions:

• Assign the user the Cloud Functions Invoker role.

• Redeploy your function to allow unauthenticated invocations if this is supported by your organization. This can be useful for testing purposes.

Serving permission error due to allow internal traffic only configuration

Ingress settings restrict whether an HTTP function can be invoked by resources outside of your Google Cloud project or VPC Service Controls service perimeter. When you configure allow internal traffic only setting for ingress networking, this error message indicates that only requests from VPC networks in the same project or VPC Service Controls perimeter are allowed.

The error message

HTTP Error Response code: 404 NOT FOUND

HTTP Error Response body:

404 Page not found

The solution

To resolve this error, follow either of these solutions:

• Ensure that the request is coming from your Google Cloud project or VPC Service Controls service perimeter.

• Change the ingress settings to allow all traffic for the function.

• Cloud Functions source code can result in a 404 error due to incorrect function URL, HTTP methods, or logic errors.

Function invocation lacks valid authentication credentials

Functions configured with restricted access require an ID token. Function invocation fails if you use access tokens or refresh tokens.

The error message

HTTP Error Response code: 401 Unauthorized

HTTP Error Response body:

Your client does not have permission to the requested URL </FUNCTION_NAME>

The solution

To resolve this error, follow either of these solutions:

• Make sure that your requests include an Authorization: Bearer ID_TOKEN header, and that the token is an ID token, not an access or refresh token. If you generate this token manually with a service account's private key, you must exchange the self-signed JWT token for a Google-signed identity token. For more information, see Authenticate for invocation.

• Invoke your HTTP function using authentication credentials in your request header. For example, you can get an identity token using gcloud as follows:

  curl  -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-identity-token)" \
    https://REGION-PROJECT_ID.cloudfunctions.net/FUNCTION_NAME
  

  For more information, see Authenticating for invocation .

Function stops mid-execution, or continues running after your code finishes

Some Cloud Functions runtimes allow users to run asynchronous tasks. If your function creates such tasks, it must also explicitly wait for these tasks to complete. Failure to do so might cause your function to stop executing at the wrong time.

The error behavior

Your function exhibits one of the following behaviors:

• Your function terminates while asynchronous tasks are still running, but before the specified timeout period has elapsed.
• Your function doesn't stop running when these tasks finish, and continues to run until the timeout period has elapsed.

The solution

If your function terminates early, you should make sure all your function's asynchronous tasks are complete before your function performs any of the following actions:

• Returning a value
• Resolving or rejecting a returned Promise object (Node.js functions only)
• Throwing uncaught exceptions and errors
• Sending an HTTP response
• Calling a callback function

If your function fails to terminate after completing asynchronous tasks, you should verify that your function is correctly signaling Cloud Functions after it has completed. In particular, make sure that you perform one of the operations listed in the preceding list as soon as your function has finished its asynchronous tasks.

Runtime error when accessing resources protected by VPC Service Controls

By default, Cloud Functions uses public IP addresses to make outbound requests to other services. Functions that are not within the VPC Service Controls perimeter might receive HTTP 403 responses when attempting to access Google Cloud services protected by VPC Service Controls, due to service perimeter denials.

The error message

In Audited Resources logs, an entry like the following:

"protoPayload": {
  "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.cloud.audit.AuditLog",
  "status": {
    "code": 7,
    "details": [
      {
        "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.PreconditionFailure",
        "violations": [
          {
            "type": "VPC_SERVICE_CONTROLS",
  ...
  "authenticationInfo": {
    "principalEmail": "CLOUD_FUNCTION_RUNTIME_SERVICE_ACCOUNT",
  ...
  "metadata": {
    "violationReason": "NO_MATCHING_ACCESS_LEVEL",
    "securityPolicyInfo": {
      "organizationId": "ORGANIZATION_ID",
      "servicePerimeterName": "accessPolicies/NUMBER/servicePerimeters/SERVICE_PERIMETER_NAME"
  ...

The solution

To resolve this error, follow either of these solutions:

• The function should route all outgoing traffic through the VPC network. See Deploy functions compliant with VPC Service Controls section for more information.

• Alternatively grant the function's runtime service account access to the perimeter. You can do this either by creating an access level and adding the access level to the service perimeter, or by creating an ingress policy on the perimeter. See Using VPC Service Controls with functions outside a perimeter for more information.

Scalability

This section lists scalability issues and provides suggestions for how to fix each of them.

Cloud Logging errors related to pending queue request aborts

The following conditions can be associated with scaling failures.

• A huge sudden increase in traffic.
• Long cold start time.
• Long request processing time.
• High function error rate.
• Reaching the maximum instance limit.
• Transient factors attributed to the Cloud Functions service.

In each case Cloud Functions might not scale up fast enough to manage the traffic.

The error message

 The request was aborted because there was no available instance.

Cloud Functions has the following severity levels:

* `severity=WARNING` ( Response code: 429 ) Cloud Functions cannot scale due
  to the [`max-instances`](/functions/docs/configuring/max-instances) limit you set
  during configuration.
* `severity=ERROR` ( Response code: 500 ) Cloud Functions intrinsically
  cannot manage the rate of traffic.

The solution

• For HTTP trigger-based functions, implement exponential backoff and retries for requests that must not be dropped. If you are triggering Cloud Functions from Workflows, you can use the try/retry syntax to achieve this.
• For background or event-driven functions, Cloud Functions supports at-least-once delivery. Even without explicitly enabling retry, the event is automatically re-delivered and the function execution will be retried. For more information, see Enable event-driven function retries.
• When the root cause of the issue is a period of heightened transient errors attributed solely to Cloud Functions or if you need assistance with your issue, contact Cloud Customer Care.

Logging

The following section covers issues with logging and how to fix them.

Logs entries have none or incorrect log severity levels

Cloud Functions includes runtime logging by default. Logs written to stdout or stderr appear automatically in the Google Cloud console. But these log entries by default, contain only string messages.

The solution

To include log severities, you must send a structured log entry instead.

Handle or log exceptions differently in the event of a crash

You might want to customize how you manage and log crash information.

The solution

Wrap your function in a try block to customize handling exceptions and logging stack traces.

Adding a try block can result in an unintended side effect in event-driven functions with the retry on failure configuration. Retrying failed events might itself fail.

Example

import logging
import traceback
def try_catch_log(wrapped_func):
  def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
    try:
      response = wrapped_func(*args, **kwargs)
    except Exception:
      # Replace new lines with spaces so as to prevent several entries which
      # would trigger several errors.
      error_message = traceback.format_exc().replace('\n', '  ')
      logging.error(error_message)
      return 'Error';
    return response;
  return wrapper;

#Example hello world function

@try_catch_log
def python_hello_world(request):
  request_args = request.args

  if request_args and 'name' in request_args:
    1 + 's'
  return 'Hello World!'

Logs too large in Node.js 10+, Python 3.8, Go 1.13, and Java 11

The maximum size for a regular log entry in these runtimes is 105 KiB.

The solution

Send log entries smaller than this limit.

Missing logs despite Cloud Functions returning errors

Cloud Functions streams Cloud Function logs to a default bucket. When you create a project, Cloud Functions creates and enables the default bucket. If the default bucket is disabled or if Cloud Function logs are in the exclusion filter, the logs won't appear in the Logs Explorer.

The solution

Enable default logs and ensure no exclusion filter is set.

Cloud Functions logs are not appearing in Logs Explorer

Some Cloud Logging client libraries use an asynchronous process to write log entries. If a function crashes, or otherwise terminates, it is possible that some log entries have not been written yet and might appear later. It is also possible that some logs will be lost and cannot be seen in Logs Explorer.

The solution

Use the client library interface to flush buffered log entries before exiting the function or use the library to write log entries synchronously. You can also synchronously write logs directly to stdout or stderr.

Cloud Functions logs are not appearing using Log Router sink

Log Router sinks route log entries to various destinations.

Included in the settings are Exclusion filters, which define entries that can be discarded.

The solution

Remove exclusion filter set for resource.type="cloud_functions".

Database connections

Many database errors are associated with exceeding connection limits or timing out. If you see a Cloud SQL warning in your logs, for example, Context deadline exceeded, you might need to adjust your connection configuration. For more information, see Cloud SQL best practices.

Networking

This section lists networking issues and provides suggestions for how to fix each of them.

Network connectivity

If all outbound requests from a Cloud Function fail even after you configure egress settings, you can run Connectivity Tests to identify any underlying network connectivity issues. For more information, see Create and run Connectivity Tests.

Serverless VPC Access connector is not ready or does not exist

If a Serverless VPC Access connector fails, it might not be using a /28 subnet mask dedicated to the connector as required.

The error message

VPC connector projects/xxxxx/locations/REGION/connectors/xxxx
is not ready yet or does not exist.

When Cloud Functions is deployed with a connector in a bad state due to missing permission on the Google APIs Service Agent service account PROJECT_NUMBER@cloudservices.gserviceaccount.com, it results in the following error:

The error message

Failed to prepare VPC connector. Please try again later.

The solution

List your subnets to check whether your connector uses a /28 subnet mask. If your connector doesn't use the /28 subnet mask, recreate or create a new connector.

To resolve this issue, follow any of these solutions:

• If you recreate the connector, you don't need to redeploy other functions. You might experience a network interruption as the connector is recreated.

• If you create a new alternate connector, redeploy your functions to use the new connector, and then delete the original connector. This method avoids network interruption.

• Ensure the Cloud Functions and its associated connector are deployed in the same region.

• For the Shared VPC configuration :

  • Ensure that the service accounts SERVICE_PROJECT_NUMBER@cloudservices.gserviceaccount.com and service-SERVICE_PROJECT_NUMBER@gcp-sa-vpcaccess.iam.gserviceaccount.com used by VPC Connector to provision resources in the project are not missing permissions. These service accounts should have the roles/compute.networkUser role in the host project of Shared VPC configuration when the connector is in the service project. Otherwise, roles/compute.networkAdmin is required.

  • If the connector is created in the host project, ensure that the Serverless VPC Access User role is granted on Cloud Functions Service Agent in your host project.

  • If the connector status shows Connector is in a bad state, manual deletion recommended error, and the Google APIs Service Agent is missing the required permissions to provision compute resources in the connector's project, grant roles/compute.admin to the PROJECT_NUMBER@cloudservices.gserviceaccount.com service account. In some cases you may need to recreate the connector after updating permissions.

SMTP traffic to external destination IP addresses using TCP port 25 is blocked

For added security, Google Cloud blocks connections to TCP destination port 25 when sending emails from Cloud Functions.

The solution

To unblock these connections, choose one of the following options:

• Connect to your SMTP server on a different port, such as TCP port 587 or 465.

• Use a third-party email service.