HELP! after switching from grafanactl to gcx suddenly my dashboards have become provisioned and cannot be updated anymore

[thediveo]

My workflow for a single Grafana instance (v13.0.2):

• create, edit, update dashboards in Grafana UI
• backup dashboards to git repository
• restore only rarely if necessary.

Now after switching from grafanactl to gcx and running a gcx resources push this has turned all my dashboards into provisioned and non-updatable.

How can I set my existing dashboards to updatable and get back the original workflow?

[hamedrabah]

gcx resources push uses Grafana's Kubernetes-style resource APIs. Dashboards written through that declarative resource path are managed as provisioned/as-code resources, so the read-only UI state is expected; it is different from restoring an ordinary dashboard through the legacy dashboard database API.

There is no flag on the dashboard JSON that converts an existing provisioned resource back to an unmanaged one. To return to your former workflow:

1. pull/export the dashboards and keep that backup;
2. remove the provisioned resources through the same GCX/resource mechanism that owns them;
3. recreate them as ordinary database dashboards, either through the UI import flow or POST /api/dashboards/db (GCX's raw api command can call that endpoint).

Preserve each dashboard UID in the import payload if existing links must keep working, and test with one dashboard first. Do not simply delete the local files without a verified export, because reconciliation/deletion behavior depends on the provisioning source.

Grafana's file-provisioning option allowUiUpdates: true is not the fix here: it applies to file providers, and even there a later provisioning update overwrites the database copy. For a UI-authoritative backup workflow, use gcx resources pull for export but restore through the ordinary dashboard API rather than resources push. Use resources push only when Git/as-code should remain authoritative.

[thediveo]

We'll, I managed differently and using a fixed gcx version.