Install ASP.NET Core and Configure on Linux Virtual Machine Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Article
1/17/2024

Introduction

As we know ASP.NET Core is one of the best open source frameworks used to build a modern web applications and that has the most users in the world wide today. The reason is that a significant change has been made to it is that it will work very well and more efficiently on the a big part of Linux distributions as well as on Windows and Mac operating systems that is why it is called cross-platform. Obviously, we want our app to have the best performance and be reliable so in this article I am going to explain how to install Asp.Net Core and configure Nginx web server on Azure Linux Virtual Machine (Ubuntu 18.4).

Step 1. Connect to Azure Linux VM

Putty terminal emulator is used to connect with Virtual Machine as well as run some commands to perform tasks, after you have connected with the Ubuntu Linux VM you will see something like this.

Step 2. Register Microsoft key and feed

Before we dive into installing .Net Core we will need to register the Microsoft key register the product repository on Linux Ubuntu We run the following commands to register it


wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/18.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
 
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

Step 3. Install .NET Core

There are two types of .Net Core available: SDK and Runtime. The difference between them is that:

The SDK includes everything you need to build and run .NET Core applications, using command line tools and any editor (like Visual Studio) and the runtime is also included in this type.
The runtime includes everything you need to run .NET Core applications that allows you to run apps that were made with .NET Core (already created and compiled).

To install .Net Core SDK and also include runtime, run the following commands to install it.


sudo apt-get update; \
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https && \
sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-3.1

To make sure everything is fine run the following commands:


dotnet --info


# Or run this command to get dotnet core version


dotnet --version

Now .Net Core SDK successfully installed on Linux Ubuntu 18.4.

Step 4. Install Nginx Web Server

Why choose Nginx as a Web Server ?

NGINX is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying, caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. It started out as a web server designed for maximum performance and stability. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers.

Before installing any packages we need to ensure that our local package lists is up-to-date to update all installed packages run the following command.


sudo apt-get update

To install Nginx we server packages run the following command.


sudo apt-get install nginx

After successfully installing Nginx we should enable it at boot time (load at startup) so we are running the following commands one by one.


#Enable Nginx


sudo systemctl enable nginx


#Start Nginx


sudo systemctl enable nginx

To make sure everything is fine and the status of Nginx web server on our Linux Ubuntu 18.4 we are running the following command.




sudo systemctl status nginx

To exit the status and return to home press (Ctrl + C)

To make sure Nging is working open a web browser and type the IP of Virtual Machine and hit the enter you will see the result of your goal.

Step 5. Deploying ASP.NET Core App

Simple asp.net core mvc app has created before, so we are going to deploying it to Nginx web root default directory on Virtual Machine.
Run the following command to create a new directory called ( simpleapponlinux ) in Nginx web root /var/www


sudo mkdir /var/www/simpleapponlinux

We run the following command in Package Manager Console inside Visual Studio 2019 to publish the app and its dependencies to a directory then deploy all compiled files to host system.


 dotnet publish -c release

We are going to use FileZilla as SFTP server to deploy the app on my local machine to /var/www/simpleapponlinux on Ubuntu Virtual Machine.

May we are getting this error during transferring app files
Tip: Error: /var/www/simpleapponlinux/YourAppOnLinux.dll: open for write permission denied Error: File transfer failed
to fixed that we are going to running the following command.


sudo chown -R rebin /var/www/simpleapponlinux

After we have given the permission and uploaded entire our app content to /var/www/simpleapponlinux directory we need to run the app to ensure that is working well and getting some information like localhost url and its ports that is required in the next step.
To do that we are running the following command.


cd /var/www/simpleapponlinux

Now we should be here ( /var/www/simpleapponlinux$ ) and we running the following command.


/var/www/simpleapponlinux$ dotnet YourAppOnLinux.dll

Step 6. Create Server Block

Ngnix server block allows us to run or host multiple websites on a single virtual Machine, so in this step we need to create our server block in order to forward all requests to our app
I use nano simple text editor to modify the Nginx default server block in /etc/nginx/sites-available we are running the following command to modify the default Ngnix server block.


sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Mark the text you want to cut press (Ctrl + ^).
Use the arrow keys to select the text you want to cut.
Cut the selected the text press (Ctrl + K)
Right click and paste the following simple server block


server {
    listen 80;
    location / {
  proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection keep-alive;
  proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
  proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
  }
}

Save the modified default file press (Ctrl + O) and hit the enter
To exit the nano editor press (Ctrl + x) it will ask you to exit write Y and hit the enter on your keyboard.

We have replaced content of the default server block file on Nginx so we need to reload changes that we have made before we running the following command.


sudo nginx -s reload

Step 7. Creating Service Unit File

In this step we are going to create a custom service unit file so

Tip: The service unit files define processes that are managed by systemd or contains information about a process which is managed by systemd to start or stop the service. To keep running our app in the background as unite service we will take advantage of that file, so we need to create a. service file in the systemd directory and run the following command for that purpose.


sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/appserviceunitefile.service

After running that command, the nano simple text editor will be open immediately just copy the following configuration and past it into the nano text editor.


Unit]
Description=Asp.NET Web App now is running on Ubuntu
 
[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/simpleapponlinux
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet /var/www/simpleapponlinux/YourAppOnLinux.dll
Restart=always
# Restart service after 10 seconds if the dotnet service crashes:
RestartSec=10
KillSignal=SIGINT
SyslogIdentifier=myapponlinux-log
User=rebin
Environment=ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production
Environment=DOTNET_PRINT_TELEMETRY_MESSAGE=false
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now it is time to save the modified. service file press (Ctrl + O) and hit the enter, to exit the nano editor press (Ctrl + x).

To enable and register (appserviceunitefile.service) unite file service at a boot we should running the following command.


sudo systemctl enable appserviceunitefile.service

Now we should see the following message to ensure the our unite file of service has been created successfully.


Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/appserviceunitefile.service → 
/etc/systemd/system/appserviceunitefile.service.

Run the following command to perform and start the unite of service.


sudo systemctl start appserviceunitefile.service

The last command we want to use is to check the status of the ( appserviceunitefile.service ) to ensure the service is active or not run the following command.


sudo systemctl status appserviceunitefile.service

To make sure the Asp.net Core MVC app is working open a web browser and type the IP of Virtual Machine and hit the enter you will see that Asp.Net Core is working on Linux very well.

Congratulations you were able to successfully run an Asp.Net Core App on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) Operating System.

Conclusion

In this tutorial you have learned how to deploy an ASP.NET Core MVC App as well as install Nginx web server on Linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Azure virtual machine.

ASP.NET Core is an open source, cross platform and high-performance web framework to build the modern web applications.

Nginx is a powerful web server open source, which can also be used as a reverse proxy or load balancing.

The source code of the app used as a demo can be found here on GitHub.

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