Cloudron Forum

Hi @james,

You're right on both points.

On the installationId — that was specific to my migration case, not relevant to the core bug. Scratch that.

On forcing Full Edition by default — agreed, that's the user's call.

One thing I want to add: I tested the same approaches as you did in post #15 (GRIST_EDITION=full, yarn run set-full-edition, the admin UI toggle) — none of them worked. The variable introduced in PR #2450 is actually GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full, which is a different variable from GRIST_EDITION. It controls deploymentType at runtime via a separate code path. GRIST_EDITION=full had no effect on my side either.

For anyone hitting this on Cloudron today, the workaround to test would be:

Request a free activation key at getgrist.com (free for orgs under $1M revenue)
In the Cloudron app config, add these env vars:
GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full
GRIST_ACTIVATION=<your-key>
Restart the app
I haven't been able to test this on the Cloudron package itself — I had already migrated to the official gristlabs/grist image when I found GRIST_SERVER_EDITION, so my validation is on that image, not on Cloudron. If someone still on the Cloudron package could test adding GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full to env.sh, that would confirm whether it's the fix.

The Switch to Full Grist button in the admin UI likely sets GRIST_EDITION instead of GRIST_SERVER_EDITION, which would explain why it doesn't work.

Chris

Hi @james

Thanks for the detailed report. I ran into the same issue and after digging through the source code, I found a way to get Full Edition working. Three things are needed together:

GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full in the container env (this is the missing piece, introduced in Grist 1.7.16 via PR #2450 — different from GRIST_EDITION). Flips deploymentType to enterprise.
GRIST_ACTIVATION with the JWT from getgrist.com.
The installationId in SQLite (/persist/home.db, table kvs, key installationId) has to match the one embedded in the JWT. If the DB was recreated or the JWT issued for a different install, they won't match and activation silently fails — instance stays read-only with no error message. Once I injected the matching ID, everything unlocked.
Validated on gristlabs/grist official image, SQLite backend. Full Edition active, admin panel visible, documents editable.

For the Cloudron packaging, I'd guess just adding GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full to the start script fixes step 1 natively.

References:

PR #2450: https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core/issues/2450
Happy to test a patched package if one comes together.

Chris

Hi everyone.

It's my first message here so i hope it will arrive in the good topic to the right person.
Grist Full Edition is broken since 1.7.16+ and i may have a Possible fix.

Following up on the "Switch to Full Grist" issue reported earlier here (https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/14941/grist-is-now-available). After some debugging, I believe the root cause is that the Grist packaging is missing the GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full environment variable.

This variable was introduced in Grist 1.7.16+ (PR #2450) and is required to activate Full Edition at runtime. Without it, Grist defaults to Community Edition (deploymentType=core) even when a valid GRIST_ACTIVATION key is provided.

The GRIST_ACTIVATION JWT only validates features (seats, read-only flag, expiration) — it does not switch the edition by itself.

Proposed fix
Adding this to the packaging should resolve the issue:
export GRIST_SERVER_EDITION=full

References
PR #2450: https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core/issues/2450
Grist README (environment variables): https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core#environment-variables
Hope this helps.

Best

Chris