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Host your .NET Core project on Linux with Nginx

2021-08-03 Linux
Have you been looking for hosting alternatives for your .NET Projects? Why not host them yourself? .NET Core is built to run on Linux as well as on Windows. This guide will take you trough all necessary steps to get your project running on a Linux server.

Get yourself a good server

The first step is to get yourself a server. Here bellow you’ll find a list with good server options. This guide will work for most Debian based operating systems.

Install the latest version of .NET Core

If you wish to install other versions of .NET Core or simply need the instructions for another operative system then visit: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core

Before we can install .NET Core we have to make sure that the package-installer knows where to find them. Run the following commands:

Add the Microsoft package signing key 
sudo wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/debian/10/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

Run these commands in the following order to install the runtime for .NET Core 5.0. If you wish to install another version then visit the link above for further instructions

Install .NET Core 5.0 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y aspnetcore-runtime-5.0

Install Nginx

Since .NET Core has it's own built in webbserver which is somewhat limited, we'll use Nginx as a reverse proxy. 

Install Nginx 
sudo apt-get install nginx
Make sure Nginx is running by typing in: 
sudo systemctl status nginx
Start, stop or restart Nginx by typing the following commands 
sudo service nginx start
sudo service nginx stop
sudo service nginx restart
Tell Nginx where to find your website 
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
server {
    listen        80;
    server_name   example.com;
    root /websites/mywebsite;
    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 $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Configure your service

Create a new service file 
sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/MY-SERVICE-NAME.service
Service file example 
[Unit]
Description=This is a sample application for my tutorial
[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/websites/mywebsite/ #CHANGE this to your application location
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet /websites/mywebsite/MyWeb.dll #CHANGE this to your application location
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
KillSignal=SIGINT
SyslogIdentifier=dotnet-myapp
User=www-data
Environment=ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production
Environment=DOTNET_PRINT_TELEMETRY_MESSAGE=false

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Enable your service 
sudo systemctl enable MY-SERVICE-NAME.service
Start your service 
sudo systemctl start MY-SERVICE-NAME.service

Install a SSL certificate with Letsencrypt

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx

sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com

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