Run .NET Core on Debian 8 with DirectAdmin

What is it? questionmark

For a couple of year I got some virtual servers for my own company. On one of those I run Debian 8 (hosted via kvm) with DirectAdmin.
In this article I’ll write how I managed to get a sample .NET Core WebAPI running on this environment.

Update 2017-03-27: Used Apache as proxy

Steps to get there

First I start by installing .NET Core on my environment.

[code]apt-get install curl libunwind8 gettext
curl -sSL -o dotnet.tar.gz https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=843453
mkdir -p /opt/dotnet && tar zxf dotnet.tar.gz -C /opt/dotnet
ln -s /opt/dotnet/dotnet /usr/local/bin[/code]

Next, I protected my working directory, as this is already visit-able from my current webpage, via a .htaccess file.

DirectAdmin also handles SSH access for users, in the control panel it is as simple as chaning a checkbox.

For this project I’m going to try Visual Studio Team Services, instead of GitHub.

The history overview (commits)

In order to get this repository on my webserver, I used the following commands. I’ve already setup the token access for my user before.

[code]git init .
git remote add -t \* -f origin https://user:token@account.visualstudio.com_git/repository
git checkout master
git pull[/code]

The complete process

Having a token makes it easy to revoke access if needed, and saves me the trouble of typing in the password every pull that I make.
The idea is to create a script that does the next steps:

  1. Pulls the latest git code;
  2. Runs dotnet build;
  3. Runs dotnet folder/output.dll &.

That turned out to not be the problem, the problem is more that I didn’t want to open port 5000 (in my case), and port 80 was already taken by Apache on the server. Having nginx would be overkill for my purpose, so I found a solution that covers my needs:

  1. Run the .NET Core Kestrel webserver that only listens to localhost port 5000;
  2. Use a proxy PHP script that interacts between the outside world and the webapi.

As my website already has https support (via the friends of Let’s Encrypt), I don’t have to worry to much about that part handling in Kestrel. Also, remember that I setup an .htaccess file in oder to disallow any other IP than my trusted ones to access this environment.

Testing the webapi application with Postman via the php proxy

TODO questionmark

  1. Create a start/stop functionalaty, right now this is all done via the command line;
  2. Create pull latest git and build automatically, again, this is now done via the command line;
  3. Check the performance implications that this proxy might cause.

Update 2017-03-27: Used Apache as proxy

With DirectAdmin it is possible to set a custom HTTPD per domain. I created a new domain for this project (actually a subdomain but added it as a domain in DirectAdmin).
Then I can set the specific HTTPD configuration in order to create a proxy:

[code]ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 1.2.3.4
</Proxy>

ProxyPass / http://localhost:5000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:5000/[/code]

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