ASP.NET Core IIS Project not running or producing any logs

Question

I have:

• an EC2 instance running Windows Server 2016,
• the .NET Web Host Bundle installed (including the .NET Core 2 SDK),
• the AspNetCoreModule installed,
• a site in IIS10 and an app pool with no managed code,

• the following BuildWebHost :

   public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args) => WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .UseKestrel() .UseIISIntegration() .UseStartup<Startup>() .Build(); 

• this web.config for ASP.NET Core 2 MVC in the sites root folder:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*" modules="AspNetCoreModule" resourceType="Unspecified" /> </handlers> <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet" arguments=".\\ProjectOutput.dll" stdoutLogEnabled="true" stdoutLogFile=".\\logs\\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false" /> </system.webServer> </configuration> 

What works:

• placing an index.html with any content in the root folder of the site.
  • the content of the file is served properly when I goto the site from an external network or computer.

What doesn't work:

• placing my published ASP.NET Core MVC site in the root folder of the site, serves a 500 Internal Server Error
  • published using dotnet publish
• additionally, nothing is getting logged either.

What could I be missing that would cause my project to not start, without any logging?

Answer 1

I know I commented an houre ago, but reading this issue I thought I had the same problem. What helped for me was removing the following from the Startup.cs in the configureServices method:

Services.AddDeveloperSigningCredential();

I noticed that when publishing the application, the application in IIS was still asking for a tempkey.rsa. That's weird because this one is not published with it. So after removing the certain line of code it's all working.

Also a great tip to remember, if you can't figure out the error: go to the folder of your application. Open command. And enter: dotnet .\\NAMEOFSTARTING.DLL

This way you start your website from the command, and see possible errors.