uTask on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS by cloudimg

uTask on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

uTask is an open source automation engine from OVH for turning operational runbooks into auditable, repeatable, self service tasks. You describe a process once as a YAML task template, with typed and validated inputs, steps that declare their dependencies, conditions, loops and schema checks on each step's output, and uTask executes it as a resumable, fully audited task: it retries what can be retried, pauses for human validation where you ask it to, and keeps a complete history of everything that ran, who requested it and what it returned. This cloudimg image installs uTask 1.34.0 from the official upstream release, SHA 256 verified, with its PostgreSQL database on the same machine and the official prebuilt web dashboard, so a working automation engine answers within minutes of launch.

What is included

• uTask 1.34.0, installed from the official upstream release binary and SHA 256 verified, run under systemd as an unprivileged user
• PostgreSQL, uTask's only dependency, on the same machine and created fresh with a per instance role password on first boot
• nginx on port 80 as the only network facing service, authenticating every request and passing the verified user to uTask as x-remote-user
• A host firewall that keeps uTask off the network so the reverse proxy cannot be bypassed
• Two self contained example templates preloaded so the dashboard is useful the moment you log in
• A per instance dashboard password, database password and storage encryption key generated on first boot
• 24/7 cloudimg support

Secure by default

uTask has no built in login: upstream expects a trusted reverse proxy to authenticate callers and pass the username on, which means an unguarded deployment trusts whoever asks. This image builds that proxy in. Every request is authenticated against a credential unique to your instance, the verified username is what uTask sees, anything a client tries to claim for itself is overwritten, and the engine is bound away from the network so the proxy cannot be sidestepped. Nothing secret is baked into the image and it ships with no database at all: the database password, the dashboard password and the storage encryption key that protects every task input and result at rest are all generated on the first boot of each instance and written to a root only file.

Licensing and support

uTask is licensed under the BSD 3 Clause License and is free. The cloudimg charge of 0.04 US dollars per vCPU hour covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 expert support. Standard_B2s is a good starting point. Guide: https://www.cloudimg.co.uk/guides/utask-on-ubuntu-24-04-azure/