✅ Hosting Asp.Net Core 3.1 website on Ubuntu VPS

Hi, I've been trying to host my website on my Ubuntu 20.04 Cloud VPS but when I try using the command sudo systemctl start scuffed.service the status keeps giving me this error: ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet /root/Website/ScuffedManagerWeb.dll (code=exited, status=217/USER)
I can see the files in their path locations but maybe I've messed up somewhere anyways
If anyone out there got any experience hosting websites then please post in here or feel free to DM me.

My scuffed.service looks like this:

[Unit]
Description=scuffed-manager

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/root/Website
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet /root/Website/ScuffedManagerWeb.dll
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
SyslogIdentifier=REAPER
User=REAPER

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

upon some quick google searching 217 means the user doesn't exist at the time service tried to start

do you have some logs?

Checked the logs? journalctl -ru scuffed

Can you run it normally from the command line?

Or yeah, doss the user REAPER exist on your system?

If I type dotnet /root/Website/ScuffedManagerWeb.dll then it starts the website.

This is the log I'm getting when typing journalctl -ru scuffed

is your user REAPER

like this?

To be honest I'm not 100% sure

show me console

what does it say

Like this?
root@somethingcp-7176:~# journalctl -ru scuffed

you are using root

as the user

Oh...

please type this

awk -F: '{ print $1}' /etc/passwd

wait

That makes more sense then...

yes

type that

or this

cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

What does it do?

lists all users

no REAPER

user

So I should just change REAPER to root in the service file?

just remove it

and it will run as root

Ok thanks, I'll try that

Although, you probably don't want to run it as root. Create a dedicated user for it

yeah also that

How do I make a user then?

Ok so I added a new user named "REAPER" and kept the User = REAPER in my scuffed.service.
Then I did sudo systemctl daemon-reload => sudo systemctl start scuffed.service => sudo systemctl status scuffed.service and it gives me this new error

● scuffed.service - scuffed-manager
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/scuffed.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2023-02-05 01:16:09 CET; 6s ago
Process: 1528970 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet /root/Website/ScuffedManagerWeb.dll (code=exited, status=200/CHDIR)
Main PID: 1528970 (code=exited, status=200/CHDIR)

that means the user doesn't have permissions i thinik

I was just reading up on it as well and I came to the same conclusion

Btw I just tried to run the website with the root user and it works

Not really sure how to give the REAPER user permissions though 😅

just run it like services by default for now while your read more on linux and some of it's weird ways

that take time to get used to

Yeah read something about groups and stuff and it seemed a bit complicated for now 🙂

Thanks a lot for the help 😄

Is Apache2 a good way to host a website? Or are there some better ways to use?

depends on the app

i would say:

apache: more flexibility, feature rich, large volume of traffic
nginx: faster, lightweight, scalable

it's failing b/c non-root users aren't allowed to be in root's home folder

When hosting through Apache2, how long does it usually take before I can see the website on my own computer?
I'm asking because I'm not sure if my website is setup correctly or if it just takes time before it's live

Apache should just work immediately

The DNS resolvers might take some time to register your domain, though

How does it work again with domains. I have to pay for one right? Or is it possible to have a name for free

Yeah, you need to pay a yearly fee

That might be my problem then...

There aren't any weird .ladwl to have at the end to get a free domain?

Uh, there's Freenom I guess

But they can just revoke your domain at any time

And direct it to a page with ads

So not really trustworthy lol

Domains aren't expensive, tho

I guess you got a point there

Ok so let's say I buy the domain "scuffed-manager.shop". Do I then just have to change my Apache2.conf file?

Because I feel like there got to be some kind of login to prove you're the owner of the domain (I just don't want to buy a domain and not know how to use it 😅).

Plenty of tutorials around, you'll surely find something

So it's not too advanced?

Nah, super simple

Ok, thanks I'll try looking into it 😄

Oh yeah one more thing. The price of this domain is 1,78 dollars but if I buy 2 years the price goes to 32,76 dollars. Does this mean that there's a discount on the first year or is it to prevent people locking on to a domain for a low price without having a chance of losing it?

Seems a bit weird to me

Some registrars, yeah, lure you in with low initial prices and then raise them

Cloudflare will offer constant prices

The registrars that offer initial discount are cool if you need a domain for some small project for a year or so

But after that... they can get really expensive

Google Domains is another registrar that's trustworthy and doesn't discount the first year

Cloudflare is the cheapest tho

This website is just a small one which is being used by me and 2 others to select movies on 😅

So I'm thinking if it might be worth going for a 1 year domain and then just switching to a new domain name

Yeah, that would work lol

Or you could try just using the IP maybe

But I'm struggling to find the prices on CloudFlare domains

Need to log in first, go to registrar in the left menu

Dumb question but how do I use the ip? Is that just to replace the domain name in my conf files with the vps ip?

Enter domain name, press enter, will show all available TLDs and prices

Yeah

Let me try and see if that works because I'm very curious if my setup actually works 😉

To find my ip I just have to type ifconfig and find get the number from inet right?

Probably?

It's the IP you use to SSH into the server

Might need to add the port too

if you have a credit card you can get 200 bucks on azure for free, which should give you hosting for about a year

for free

they give you subdomain in the form of: foo.azurewebsites.net

with ssl and everything

That might be a solution as well. Right now it won't even show me the website if I'm running it on ip instead of a domain name 😅