Hosting ASP.NET Core in Linux

This article provides step by step instructions on how to host ASP.NET Core 2 on Ubuntu 16.04 which is a Linux distribution.

As more and more developers use open-source software such as Java, PHP, MySQL, Apache and Linux to develop web applications, the popularity of ASP.NET has declined in some areas. For example, there is much less ASP.NET developers in China now than a few years ago. As more and more ASP.NET programmers have switched to Java and PHP, it is very hard to find a qualified ASP.NET programer in China. One reason is that it costs more to use ASP.NET as web development platform comparing with open-source platform. Open-source softwares are all free. Visual Studio is not free except community edition. The web app developed by ASP.NET can only be hosted on IIS on Windows Server. The database is most likely SQL Server. Windows Server and SQL Server are expensive. The other reason is that many developers do not want to lock themselves into a single vendor and do not have the freedom to choose other tools and platforms. An ASP.NET devleoper is limited to use only microsoft products such as Visual Studio, Windows and SQL Server.

 

To either compete other open-source software or become part of the open-source community, Microsoft launched a new web devleopment framework called ASP.NET Core. It is a cross-platform open-source framework. ASP.NET Core has the potential to attact more developers since it can build and run web apps on Windows, macOS and Linux. ASP.NET has a lot of productive features. Many developers agree that C# is a more advanced modern programming language comparing with Java. And a lot of developers consider Visual Studio is the best IDE software.

 

1. Log on to Azure Portal.

2. Select New from the left menu. On the Search textbox, type Ubuntu. On the search result blade panel, select Ubuntu Server 16.01 LTS.

 

3. Choose Resource Manager as the deployment model, then click Create button.

 

4. Configure the VM with the desired parameters on the next few blade panels. Choose Password as the athentication type.

 

5. Click Create button on the last blade panel to create the VM.

 

ssh {user name}@{ip address}

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xfce4

sudo apt-get install xrdp

sudo apt-get install firefox

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | gpg --dearmor > microsoft.gpg


sudo mv microsoft.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/microsoft.gpg

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/microsoft-ubuntu-xenial-prod xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list'

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install dotnet-sdk-2.1.3

dotnet --version

dotnet new mvc --name FirstMvc

cd FirstMvc


dotnet restore


dotnet run

sudo apt-get install nginx

sudo service nginx start

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

proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;

#try_files $uri $uri/ =404;

server {

    # Some configurations.

        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                #try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
                # Configure reverse proxy server
                proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
        }

    # Some other configurations.
}

sudo nginx -t

sudo nginx -s reload

dotnet publish --configuration Release

dotnet FirstMvc.dll