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      How To Monitor Your Managed PostgreSQL Database Using Nagios Core on Ubuntu 18.04


      The author selected the Free and Open Source Fund to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.

      Introduction

      Database monitoring is key to understanding how a database performs over time. It can help you uncover hidden usage problems and bottlenecks happening in your database. Implementing database monitoring systems can quickly turn out to be a long-term advantage, which will positively influence your infrastructure management process. You’ll be able to swiftly react to status changes of your database and will quickly be notified when monitored services return to normal functioning.

      Nagios Core is a popular monitoring system that you can use to monitor your managed database. The benefits of using Nagios for this task are its versatility—it’s easy to configure and use—a large repository of available plugins, and most importantly, integrated alerting.

      In this tutorial, you will set up PostgreSQL database monitoring in Nagios Core using the check_postgres Nagios plugin and set up Slack-based alerting. In the end, you’ll have a monitoring system in place for your managed PostgreSQL database, and will be notified of status changes of various functionality immediately.

      Prerequisites

      • An Ubuntu 18.04 server with root privileges, and a secondary, non-root account. You can set this up by following this initial server setup guide. For this tutorial the non-root user is sammy.

      • Nagios Core installed on your server. To achieve this, complete the first five steps of the How To Install Nagios 4 and Monitor Your Servers on Ubuntu 18.04 tutorial.

      • A DigitalOcean account and a PostgreSQL managed database provisioned from DigitalOcean with connection information available. Make sure that your server’s IP address is on the whitelist. To learn more about DigitalOcean Managed Databases, visit the product docs.

      • A Slack account with full access, added to a workspace where you’ll want to receive status updates.

      Step 1 — Installing check_postgres

      In this section, you’ll download the latest version of the check_postgres plugin from Github and make it available to Nagios Core. You’ll also install the PostgreSQL client (psql), so that check_postgres will be able to connect to your managed database.

      Start off by installing the PostgreSQL client by running the following command:

      • sudo apt install postgresql-client

      Next, you’ll download check_postgres to your home directory. First, navigate to it:

      Head over to the Github releases page and copy the link of the latest version of the plugin. At the time of writing, the latest version of check_postgres was 2.24.0; keep in mind that this will update, and where possible it's best practice to use the latest version.

      Now download it using curl:

      • curl -LO https://github.com/bucardo/check_postgres/releases/download/2.24.0/check_postgres-2.24.0.tar.gz

      Extract it using the following command:

      • tar xvf check_postgres-*.tar.gz

      This will create a directory with the same name as the file you have downloaded. That folder contains the check_postgres executable, which you'll need to copy to the directory where Nagios stores its plugins (usually /usr/local/nagios/libexec/). Copy it by running the following command:

      • sudo cp check_postgres-*/check_postgres.pl /usr/local/nagios/libexec/

      Next, you'll need to give the nagios user ownership of it, so that it can be run from Nagios:

      • sudo chown nagios:nagios /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_postgres.pl

      check_postgres is now available to Nagios and can be used from it. However, it provides a lot of commands pertaining to different aspects of PostgreSQL, and for better service maintainability, it's better to break them up so that they can be called separately. You'll achieve this by creating a symlink to every check_postgres command in the plugin directory.

      Navigate to the directory where Nagios stores plugins by running the following command:

      • cd /usr/local/nagios/libexec

      Then, create the symlinks with:

      • sudo perl check_postgres.pl --symlinks

      The output will look like this:

      Output

      Created "check_postgres_archive_ready" Created "check_postgres_autovac_freeze" Created "check_postgres_backends" Created "check_postgres_bloat" Created "check_postgres_checkpoint" Created "check_postgres_cluster_id" Created "check_postgres_commitratio" Created "check_postgres_connection" Created "check_postgres_custom_query" Created "check_postgres_database_size" Created "check_postgres_dbstats" Created "check_postgres_disabled_triggers" Created "check_postgres_disk_space" Created "check_postgres_fsm_pages" Created "check_postgres_fsm_relations" Created "check_postgres_hitratio" Created "check_postgres_hot_standby_delay" Created "check_postgres_index_size" Created "check_postgres_indexes_size" Created "check_postgres_last_analyze" Created "check_postgres_last_autoanalyze" Created "check_postgres_last_autovacuum" Created "check_postgres_last_vacuum" Created "check_postgres_listener" Created "check_postgres_locks" Created "check_postgres_logfile" Created "check_postgres_new_version_bc" Created "check_postgres_new_version_box" Created "check_postgres_new_version_cp" Created "check_postgres_new_version_pg" Created "check_postgres_new_version_tnm" Created "check_postgres_pgagent_jobs" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_cl_active" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_cl_waiting" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_maxwait" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_sv_active" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_sv_idle" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_sv_login" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_sv_tested" Created "check_postgres_pgb_pool_sv_used" Created "check_postgres_pgbouncer_backends" Created "check_postgres_pgbouncer_checksum" Created "check_postgres_prepared_txns" Created "check_postgres_query_runtime" Created "check_postgres_query_time" Created "check_postgres_relation_size" Created "check_postgres_replicate_row" Created "check_postgres_replication_slots" Created "check_postgres_same_schema" Created "check_postgres_sequence" Created "check_postgres_settings_checksum" Created "check_postgres_slony_status" Created "check_postgres_table_size" Created "check_postgres_timesync" Created "check_postgres_total_relation_size" Created "check_postgres_txn_idle" Created "check_postgres_txn_time" Created "check_postgres_txn_wraparound" Created "check_postgres_version" Created "check_postgres_wal_files"

      Perl listed all the functions it created a symlink for. These can now be executed from the command line as usual.

      You've downloaded and installed the check_postgres plugin. You have also created symlinks to all the commands of the plugin, so that they can be used individually from Nagios. In the next step, you'll create a connection service file, which check_postgres will use to connect to your managed database.

      Step 2 — Configuring Your Database

      In this section, you will create a PostgreSQL connection service file containing the connection information of your database. Then, you will test the connection data by invoking check_postgres on it.

      The connection service file is by convention called pg_service.conf, and must be located under /etc/postgresql-common/. Create it for editing with your favorite editor (for example, nano):

      • sudo nano /etc/postgresql-common/pg_service.conf

      Add the following lines, replacing the highlighted placeholders with the actual values shown in your Managed Database Control Panel under the section Connection Details:

      /etc/postgresql-common/pg_service.conf

      [managed-db]
      host=host
      port=port
      user=username
      password=password
      dbname=defaultdb
      sslmode=require
      

      The connection service file can house multiple database connection info groups. The beginning of a group is signaled by putting its name in square brackets. After that comes the connection parameters (host, port, user, password, and so on), separated by new lines, which must be given a value.

      Save and close the file when you are finished.

      You'll now test the validity of the configuration by connecting to the database via check_postgres by running the following command:

      • ./check_postgres.pl --dbservice=managed-db --action=connection

      Here, you tell check_postgres which database connection info group to use with the parameter --dbservice, and also specify that it should only try to connect to it by specifying connection as the action.

      Your output will look similar to this:

      Output

      POSTGRES_CONNECTION OK: service=managed-db version 11.4 | time=0.10s

      This means that check_postgres succeeded in connecting to the database, according to the parameters from pg_service.conf. If you get an error, double check what you have just entered in that config file.

      You've created and filled out a PostgreSQL connection service file, which works as a connection string. You have also tested the connection data by running check_postgres on it and observing the output. In the next step, you will configure Nagios to monitor various parts of your database.

      Step 3 — Creating Monitoring Services in Nagios

      Now you will configure Nagios to watch over various metrics of your database by defining a host and multiple services, which will call the check_postgres plugin and its symlinks.

      Nagios stores your custom configuration files under /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects. New files you add there must be manually enabled in the central Nagios config file, located at /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg. You'll now define commands, a host, and multiple services, which you'll use to monitor your managed database in Nagios.

      First, create a folder under /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects to store your PostgreSQL related configuration by running the following command:

      • sudo mkdir /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql

      You'll store Nagios commands for check_nagios in a file named commands.cfg. Create it for editing:

      • sudo nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql/commands.cfg

      Add the following lines:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql/commands.cfg

      define command {
          command_name           check_postgres_connection
          command_line           /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_postgres_connection --dbservice=$ARG1$
      }
      
      define command {
          command_name           check_postgres_database_size
          command_line           /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_postgres_database_size --dbservice=$ARG1$ --critical='$ARG2$'
      }
      
      define command {
          command_name           check_postgres_locks
          command_line           /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_postgres_locks --dbservice=$ARG1$
      }
      
      define command {
          command_name           check_postgres_backends
          command_line           /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_postgres_backends --dbservice=$ARG1$
      }
      

      Save and close the file.

      In this file, you define four Nagios commands that call different parts of the check_postgres plugin (checking connectivity, getting the number of locks and connections, and the size of the whole database). They all accept an argument that is passed to the --dbservice parameter, and specify which of the databases defined in pg_service.conf to connect to.

      The check_postgres_database_size command accepts a second argument that gets passed to the --critical parameter, which specifies the point at which the database storage is becoming full. Accepted values include 1 KB for a kilobyte, 1 MB for a megabyte, and so on, up to exabytes (EB). A number without a capacity unit is treated as being expressed in bytes.

      Now that the necessary commands are defined, you'll define the host (essentially, the database) and its monitoring services in a file named services.cfg. Create it using your favorite editor:

      • sudo nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql/services.cfg

      Add the following lines, replacing db_max_storage_size with a value pertaining to the available storage of your database. It is recommended to set it to 90 percent of the storage size you have allocated to it:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql/services.cfg

      define host {
            use                    linux-server
            host_name              postgres
            check_command          check_postgres_connection!managed-db
      }
      
      define service {
            use                    generic-service
            host_name              postgres
            service_description    PostgreSQL Connection
            check_command          check_postgres_connection!managed-db
            notification_options   w,u,c,r,f,s
      }
      
      define service {
            use                    generic-service
            host_name              postgres
            service_description    PostgreSQL Database Size
            check_command          check_postgres_database_size!managed-db!db_max_storage_size
            notification_options   w,u,c,r,f,s
      }
      
      define service {
            use                    generic-service
            host_name              postgres
            service_description    PostgreSQL Locks
            check_command          check_postgres_locks!managed-db
            notification_options   w,u,c,r,f,s
      }
      
      define service {
            use                    generic-service
            host_name              postgres
            service_description    PostgreSQL Backends
            check_command          check_postgres_backends!managed-db
            notification_options   w,u,c,r,f,s
      }
      

      You first define a host, so that Nagios will know what entity the services relate to. Then, you create four services, which call the commands you just defined. Each one passes managed-db as the argument, detailing that the managed-db you defined in Step 2 should be monitored.

      Regarding notification options, each service specifies that notifications should be sent out when the service state becomes WARNING, UNKNOWN, CRITICAL, OK (when it recovers from downtime), when the service starts flapping, or when scheduled downtime starts or ends. Without explicitly giving this option a value, no notifications would be sent out (to available contacts) at all, except if triggered manually.

      Save and close the file.

      Next, you'll need to explicitly tell Nagios to read config files from this new directory, by editing the general Nagios config file. Open it for editing by running the following command:

      • sudo nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      Find this highlighted line in the file:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      ...
      # directive as shown below:
      
      cfg_dir=/usr/local/nagios/etc/servers
      #cfg_dir=/usr/local/nagios/etc/printers
      ...
      

      Above it, add the following highlighted line:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      ...
      cfg_dir=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql
      cfg_dir=/usr/local/nagios/etc/servers
      ...
      

      Save and close the file. This line tells Nagios to load all config files from the /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql directory, where your configuration files are located.

      Before restarting Nagios, check the validity of the configuration by running the following command:

      • sudo /usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      The end of the output will look similar to this:

      Output

      Total Warnings: 0 Total Errors: 0 Things look okay - No serious problems were detected during the pre-flight check

      This means that Nagios found no errors in the configuration. If it shows you an error, you'll also see a hint as to what went wrong, so you'll be able to fix the error more easily.

      To make Nagios reload its configuration, restart its service by running the following command:

      • sudo systemctl restart nagios

      You can now navigate to Nagios in your browser. Once it loads, press on the Services option from the left-hand menu. You'll see the postgres host and a list of services, along with their current statuses:

      PostgreSQL Monitoring Services - Pending

      They will all soon turn to green and show an OK status. You'll see the command output under the Status Information column. You can click on the service name and see detailed information about its status and availability.

      You've added check_postgres commands, a host, and multiple services to your Nagios installation to monitor your database. You've also checked that the services are working properly by examining them via the Nagios web interface. In the next step, you will configure Slack-based alerting.

      Step 4 — Configuring Slack Alerting

      In this section, you will configure Nagios to alert you about events via Slack, by posting them into desired channels in your workspace.

      Before you start, log in to your desired workspace on Slack and create two channels where you'll want to receive status messages from Nagios: one for host, and the other one for service notifications. If you wish, you can create only one channel where you'll receive both kinds of alerts.

      Then, head over to the Nagios app in the Slack App Directory and press on Add Configuration. You'll see a page for adding the Nagios Integration.

      Slack - Add Nagios Integration

      Press on Add Nagios Integration. When the page loads, scroll down and take note of the token, because you'll need it further on.

      Slack - Integration Token

      You'll now install and configure the Slack plugin (written in Perl) for Nagios on your server. First, install the required Perl prerequisites by running the following command:

      • sudo apt install libwww-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl -y

      Then, download the plugin to your Nagios plugin directory:

      • sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tinyspeck/services-examples/master/nagios.pl -o slack.pl

      Make it executable by running the following command:

      Now, you'll need to edit it to connect to your workspace using the token you got from Slack. Open it for editing:

      Find the following lines in the file:

      /usr/local/nagios/libexec/slack.pl

      ...
      my $opt_domain = "foo.slack.com"; # Your team's domain
      my $opt_token = "your_token"; # The token from your Nagios services page
      ...
      

      Replace foo.slack.com with your workspace domain and your_token with your Nagios app integration token, then save and close the file. The script will now be able to send proper requests to Slack, which you'll now test by running the following command:

      • ./slack.pl -field slack_channel=#your_channel_name -field HOSTALIAS="Test Host" -field HOSTSTATE="UP" -field HOSTOUTPUT="Host is UP" -field NOTIFICATIONTYPE="RECOVERY"

      Replace your_channel_name with the name of the channel where you'll want to receive status alerts. The script will output information about the HTTP request it made to Slack, and if everything went through correctly, the last line of the output will be ok. If you get an error, double check if the Slack channel you specified exists in the workspace.

      You can now head over to your Slack workspace and select the channel you specified. You'll see a test message coming from Nagios.

      Slack - Nagios Test Message

      This confirms that you have properly configured the Slack script. You'll now move on to configuring Nagios to alert you via Slack using this script.

      You'll need to create a contact for Slack and two commands that will send messages to it. You'll store this config in a file named slack.cfg, in the same folder as the previous config files. Create it for editing by running the following command:

      • sudo nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql/slack.cfg

      Add the following lines:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/postgresql/slack.cfg

      define contact {
            contact_name                             slack
            alias                                    Slack
            service_notification_period              24x7
            host_notification_period                 24x7
            service_notification_options             w,u,c,f,s,r
            host_notification_options                d,u,r,f,s
            service_notification_commands            notify-service-by-slack
            host_notification_commands               notify-host-by-slack
      }
      
      define command {
            command_name     notify-service-by-slack
            command_line     /usr/local/nagios/libexec/slack.pl -field slack_channel=#service_alerts_channel
      }
      
      define command {
            command_name     notify-host-by-slack
            command_line     /usr/local/nagios/libexec/slack.pl -field slack_channel=#host_alerts_channel
      }
      

      Here you define a contact named slack, state that it can be contacted anytime and specify which commands to use for notifying service and host related events. Those two commands are defined after it and call the script you have just configured. You'll need to replace service_alerts_channel and host_alerts_channel with the names of the channels where you want to receive service and host messages, respectively. If preferred, you can use the same channel names.

      Similarly to the service creation in the last step, setting service and host notification options on the contact is crucial, because it governs what kind of alerts the contact will receive. Omitting those options would result in sending out notifications only when manually triggered from the web interface.

      When you are done with editing, save and close the file.

      To enable alerting via the slack contact you just defined, you'll need to add it to the admin contact group, defined in the contacts.cfg config file, located under /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/. Open it for editing by running the following command:

      • sudo nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg

      Find the config block that looks like this:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg

      define contactgroup {
      
          contactgroup_name       admins
          alias                   Nagios Administrators
          members                 nagiosadmin
      }
      

      Add slack to the list of members, like so:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg

      define contactgroup {
      
          contactgroup_name       admins
          alias                   Nagios Administrators
          members                 nagiosadmin,slack
      }
      

      Save and close the file.

      By default when running scripts, Nagios does not make host and service information available via environment variables, which is what the Slack script requires in order to send meaningful messages. To remedy this, you'll need to set the enable_environment_macros setting in nagios.cfg to 1. Open it for editing by running the following command:

      • sudo nano /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      Find the line that looks like this:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      enable_environment_macros=0
      

      Change the value to 1, like so:

      /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      enable_environment_macros=1
      

      Save and close the file.

      Test the validity of the Nagios configuration by running the following command:

      • sudo /usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

      The end of the output will look like:

      Output

      Total Warnings: 0 Total Errors: 0 Things look okay - No serious problems were detected during the pre-flight check

      Proceed to restart Nagios by running the following command:

      • sudo systemctl restart nagios

      To test the Slack integration, you'll send out a custom notification via the web interface. Reload the Nagios Services status page in your browser. Press on the PostgreSQL Backends service and press on Send custom service notification on the right when the page loads.

      Nagios - Custom Service Notification

      Type in a comment of your choice and press on Commit, and then press on Done. You'll immediately receive a new message in Slack.

      Slack - Status Alert From Nagios

      You have now integrated Slack with Nagios, so you'll receive messages about critical events and status changes immediately. You've also tested the integration by manually triggering an event from within Nagios.

      Conclusion

      You now have Nagios Core configured to watch over your managed PostgreSQL database and report any status changes and events to Slack, so you'll always be in the loop of what is happening to your database. This will allow you to swiftly react in case of an emergency, because you'll be getting the status feed in real time.

      If you'd like to learn more about the features of check_postgres, check out its docs, where you'll find a lot more commands that you can possibly use.

      For more information about what you can do with your PostgreSQL Managed Database, visit the product docs.



      Source link

      How To Deploy an ASP.NET Core Application with MySQL Server Using Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04


      The author selected the Open Source Initiative to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.

      Introduction

      ASP.NET Core is a high-performant, open-source framework for building modern web applications, meant to be a more modular version of Microsoft’s ASP.NET Framework. Released in 2016, it can run on several operating systems such as Linux and macOS. This enables developers to target a particular operating system for development based on design requirements. With ASP.NET Core, a developer can build any kind of web application or service irrespective of the complexity and size. Developers can also make use of Razor pages to create page-focused design working on top of the traditional Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

      ASP.NET Core provides the flexibility to integrate with any front-end frameworks to handle client-side logic or consume a web service. You could, for example, build a RESTful API with ASP.NET Core and easily consume it with JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue.js.

      In this tutorial you’ll set up and deploy a production-ready ASP.NET Core application with a MySQL Server on Ubuntu 18.04 using Nginx. You will deploy a demo ASP.NET Core application similar to the application from Microsoft’s documentation and hosted on GitHub. Once deployed, the demo application will allow you to create a list of movies and store it in the database. You’ll be able to create, read, update, and delete records from the database. You can use this tutorial to deploy your own ASP.NET Core application instead; it’s possible you’ll have to implement extra steps that include generating a new migration file for your database.

      Prerequisites

      You will need the following for this tutorial:

      Step 1 — Installing .NET Core Runtime

      A .NET Core runtime is required to successfully run a .NET Core application, so you’ll start by installing this to your machine. First, you need to register the Microsoft Key and product repository. After that, you will install the required dependencies.

      First, logged in as your new created user, make sure you’re in your root directory:

      Next, run the following command to register the Microsoft key and product repository:

      • wget -q https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/18.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb

      Use dpkg with the -i flag to install the specified file:

      • sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

      To facilitate the installation of other packages required for your application, you will install the universe repository with the following command:

      • sudo add-apt-repository universe

      Next install the apt-transport package to allow the use of repositories accessed via the HTTP Secure protocol:

      • sudo apt install apt-transport-https

      Now, run the following command to download the packages list from the repositories and update them to get information on the newest versions of packages and their dependencies:

      Finally, you can install the .NET runtime SDK with:

      • sudo apt install dotnet-sdk-2.2

      You will be prompted with the details of the size of additional files that will be installed. Type Y and hit ENTER to continue.

      Now that you're done installing the .NET Core runtime SDK on the server, you are almost ready to download the demo application from GitHub and set up the deployment configuration. But first, you'll create the database for the application.

      Step 2 — Creating a MySQL User and Database

      In this section, you will create a MySQL server user, create a database for the application, and grant all the necessary privileges for the new user to connect to the database from your application.

      To begin, you need to access the MySQL client using the MySQL root account as shown here:

      You will be prompted to enter the root account password, set up during the prerequisite tutorial.

      Next, create a MySQL database for the application with:

      • CREATE DATABASE MovieAppDb;

      You will see the following output in the console:

      Output

      Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)

      You've now created the database successfully. Next, you will create a new MySQL user, associate them with the newly created database, and grant them all privileges.

      Run the following command to create the MySQL user and password. Remember to change the username and password to something more secure:

      • CREATE USER 'movie-admin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

      You will see the following output:

      Output

      Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

      To access a database or carry out a specific action on it, a MySQL user needs the appropriate permission. At the moment movie-admin does not have the appropriate permission over the application database.

      You will change that by running the following command to grant access to movie-admin on MovieAppDb:

      • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON MovieAppDb.* TO 'movie-admin'@'localhost';

      You will see the following output:

      Output

      Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

      Now, you can reload the grant tables by running the following command to apply the changes that you just made using the flush statement:

      You will see the following output:

      Output

      Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

      You are done creating a new user and granting privileges. To test if you are on track, exit the MySQL client:

      Log in again, using the credentials of the MySQL user you just created and enter the appropriate password when prompted:

      Check to be sure that the user movie-admin can access the created database, check with:

      You will see the MovieAppDb table listed in the output:

      Output

      +--------------------+ | Database | +--------------------+ | MovieAppDb | | information_schema | +--------------------+ 2 rows in set (0.01 sec)

      Now, exit the MySQL client:

      You've created a database, made a new MySQL user for the demo application, and granted the newly created user the right privileges to access the database. In the next section, you will start setting up the demo application.

      Step 3 — Setting Up the Demo App and Database Credentials

      As stated earlier, you'll deploy an existing ASP.NET Core application. This application was built to create a movie list and it uses the Model-View-Controller design pattern to ensure a proper structure and separation of concerns. To create or add a new movie to the list, the user will populate the form fields with the appropriate details and click on the Create button to post the details to the controller. The controller at this point will receive a POST HTTP request with the submitted details and persist the data in the database through the model.

      You will use Git to pull the source code of this demo application from GitHub and save it in a new directory. You could also download an alternate application here if you will be deploying a different application.

      To begin, create a new directory named movie-app from the terminal by using the following command:

      • sudo mkdir -p /var/www/movie-app

      This will serve as the root directory for your application. Next, change the folder owner and group in order to allow a non-root user account to work with the project files:

      • sudo chown sammy:sammy /var/www/movie-app

      Replace sammy with your sudo non-root username.

      Now, you can move into the parent directory and clone the application on GitHub:

      • cd /var/www
      • git clone https://github.com/do-community/movie-app-list.git movie-app

      You will see the following output:

      Output

      Cloning into 'movie-app'... remote: Enumerating objects: 91, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (91/91), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (73/73), done. remote: Total 91 (delta 13), reused 91 (delta 13), pack-reused 0 Unpacking objects: 100% (91/91), done.

      You have successfully cloned the demo application from GitHub, so the next step will be to create a successful connection to the application database. You will do this by editing the ConnectionStrings property within the appsettings.json file and add the details of the database.

      Change directory into the application:

      Now open the file for editing:

      • sudo nano appsettings.json

      Add your database credentials:

      appsettings.json

      {
        "Logging": {
          "LogLevel": {
            "Default": "Warning"
          }
        },
        "AllowedHosts": "*",
        "ConnectionStrings": {
          "MovieContext": "Server=localhost;User Id=movie-admin;Password=password;Database=MovieAppDb"
        }
      }
      

      With this in place, you've successfully created a connection to your database. Now press CTRL+X to save your changes to the file and type Y to confirm. Then hit ENTER to exit the page.

      ASP.NET Core applications use a .NET standard library named Entity Framework (EF) Core to manage interaction with the database. Entity Framework Core is a lightweight, cross-platform version of the popular Entity Framework data access technology. It is an object-relational mapper (ORM) that enables .NET developers to work with a database using any of the database providers, such as MySQL.

      You can now update your database with the tables from the cloned demo application. Run the following command for that purpose:

      • dotnet ef database update

      This will apply an update to the database and create the appropriate schemas.

      Now, to build the project and all its dependencies, run the following command:

      You will see output similar to:

      Output

      Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 16.1.76+g14b0a930a7 for .NET Core Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Restore completed in 95.09 ms for /var/www/movie-app/MvcMovie.csproj. MvcMovie -> /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/MvcMovie.dll MvcMovie -> /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/MvcMovie.Views.dll Build succeeded. 0 Warning(s) 0 Error(s) Time Elapsed 00:00:01.91

      This will build the project and install any third-party dependencies listed in the project.assets.json file but the application won’t be ready for production yet. To get the application ready for deployment, run the following command:

      You will see the following:

      Output

      Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 16.1.76+g14b0a930a7 for .NET Core Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Restore completed in 89.62 ms for /var/www/movie-app/MvcMovie.csproj. MvcMovie -> /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/MvcMovie.dll MvcMovie -> /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/MvcMovie.Views.dll MvcMovie -> /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/publish/

      This will pack and compile the application, read through its dependencies, publish the resulting set of files into a folder for deployment, and produce a cross-platform .dll file that uses the installed .NET Core runtime to run the application.

      By installing dependencies, creating a connection to the database, updating the database with the necessary tables, and publishing it for production, you've completed the setup for this demo application. In the next step you will configure the web server to make the application accessible and secure at your domain.

      Step 4 — Configuring the Web Server

      By now, having followed the How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt tutorial, you'll have a server block for your domain at /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domain with the server_name directive already set appropriately. In this step, you will edit this server block to configure Nginx as a reverse proxy for your application. A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of web servers and forwards every web browser’s request to those web servers. It receives all requests from the network and forwards them to a different web server.

      In the case of an ASP.NET Core application, Kestrel is the preferred web server that is included with it by default. It is great for serving dynamic content from an ASP.NET Core application as it provides better request-processing performance and was designed to make ASP.NET as fast as possible. However, Kestrel isn't considered a full-featured web server because it can't manage security and serve static files, which is why it is advisable to always run it behind a web server.

      To begin, ensure that you are within the root directory of your server:

      Open the server block for editing with:

      • sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domain

      As detailed in the Step 4 of the How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt tutorial, if you selected option 2, Certbot will automatically configure this server block in order to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS with just a few modifications.

      Continue with the configuration by editing the first two blocks in the file to reflect the following:

      /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-domain

      server {
      
          server_name your-domain  www.your-domain;
      
         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;
          }
      
      listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
      listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
      ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
      ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
      include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
      ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
      
      
      }
      ...
      

      The configuration in this server block will instruct Nginx to listen on port 443, which is the standard port for websites that use SSL. Furthermore, Nginx will accept public traffic on port 443 and forward every matching request to the built-in Kestrel server at http://localhost:5000.

      Finally, following the server block you just edited in the file, ensure that the second server block looks like so:

      /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-domain

      
      ...
      server {
      if ($host = www.your-domain) {
          return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
      } # managed by Certbot
      
      
      if ($host = your-domain) {
          return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
      } # managed by Certbot
      
      
          listen 80;
          listen [::]:80;
      
          server_name your-domain  www.your-domain;
      return 404; # managed by Certbot
      }
      

      This server block will redirect all requests to https://your-domain and https://www.your-domain to a secure HTTPS access.

      Next, force Nginx to pick up the changes you've made to the server block by running:

      With the Nginx configuration successfully completed, the server is fully set up to forward all HTTPS requests made to https://your-domain on to the ASP.NET Core app running on Kestrel at http://localhost:5000. However, Nginx isn’t set up to manage the Kestrel server process. To handle this and ensure that the Kestrel process keeps running in the background, you will use systemd functionalities.

      Systemd files will allow you to manage a process by providing start, stop, restart, and log functionalities once you create a process of work called a unit.

      Move into the systemd directory:

      Create a new file for editing:

      Add the following content to it:

      movie.service

      [Unit]
      Description=Movie app
      
      [Service]
      WorkingDirectory=/var/www/movie-app
      ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/publish/MvcMovie.dll
      Restart=always
      RestartSec=10
      SyslogIdentifier=movie
      User=sammy
      Environment=ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production
      Environment=DOTNET_PRINT_TELEMETRY_MESSAGE=false
      
      [Install]
      WantedBy=multi-user.target
      

      The configuration file specifies the location of the project’s folder with WorkingDirectory and the command to execute at the start of the process in ExecStart. In addition, you've used the RestartSec directive to specify when to restart the systemd service if the .NET runtime service crashes.

      Now save the file and enable the new movie service created with:

      • sudo systemctl enable movie.service

      After that, proceed to start the service and verify that it’s running by starting the service:

      • sudo systemctl start movie.service

      Then check its status:

      • sudo systemctl status movie.service

      You will see the following output:

      Output

      movie.service - Movie app Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/movie.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Sun 2019-06-23 04:51:28 UTC; 11s ago Main PID: 6038 (dotnet) Tasks: 16 (limit: 1152) CGroup: /system.slice/movie.service └─6038 /usr/bin/dotnet /var/www/movie-app/bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.2/publish/MvcMovie.dll

      This output gives you an overview of the current status of the movie.service created to keep your app running. It indicates that the service is enabled and currently active.

      Navigate to https://your-domain from your browser to run and test out the application.

      You'll see the home page for the demo application—Movie List Application.

      Movie list application

      With the reverse proxy configured and Kestrel managed through systemd, the web app is fully configured and can be accessed from a browser.

      Conclusion

      In this tutorial, you deployed an ASP.NET Core application to an Ubuntu server. To persist and manage data, you installed and used MySQL server and used the Nginx web server as a reverse proxy to serve your application.

      Beyond this tutorial, if you're interested in building an interactive web application using C# instead of Javascript you could try a web UI framework by Microsoft called Blazor. It is an event-driven component-based web UI for implementing logic on the client side of an ASP.NET Core application.

      If you wish to deploy your own application, you'll need to consider other required procedures to deploy your app. The complete source code for this demo application can be found here on GitHub.



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