Can't set production server to production

Question

On my production server I have set environment variable by adding the following to /etc/environment :

 ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production

I checked it has recorded with printenv ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT after a reboot.

My server is Ubuntu 14.04 and I am using asp.net core 1.1.

It is loading my appsettings.Development.json instead of appsettings.Production.json.

This is my startup.cs contructor

    public Startup(IHostingEnvironment env)
    {
        var builder = new ConfigurationBuilder()
            .SetBasePath(env.ContentRootPath)
            .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json", optional: false, reloadOnChange: true)
            .AddJsonFile($"appsettings.{env.EnvironmentName}.json", optional: true)
            .AddEnvironmentVariables();
        Configuration = builder.Build();
    }

Inside my log file I can correctly see it says Hosting environment: Production but if I output values from configuration file to view then it is values from contents of appsettings.Development.json.

I even tried deleting appsettings.Development.json from server and rebooting entire server but it still pulls the same values I guess it must be compiled somewhere.

I have also tried adding this to .csproj:

  <ItemGroup>
    <None Include="appsettings.*.json" CopyToPublishDirectory="Always" />
  </ItemGroup>

My settings files appear nested inside VS2017 like this:

The default appsettings.json just has a defualt value for logging, it doesn't contain the values I am pulling.

I can't figure out what the issue is.

Answer 1

Possibly a long shot, but you may have fallen into the same trap that I did. You need to explicitly include environment-based appsettings.*.json files during the publish process. They were not included by default for me, though I haven't checked the latest project templates to see if that's still true. If you haven't checked whether the appsettings.Production.json file is physically present on your production server, it might be worth a look.

If it turns out that this is your problem and you're still using project.json then if yours looked like mine used to, you'll need to add something like this:

  "publishOptions": {
    "include": [
      "wwwroot",
      "appsettings.json",
      "appsettings.*.json",
      "web.config"
    ]
  }

With the "appsettings.*.json" entry being the important one.

If you've upgraded to csproj then this link may help you work out what you'll need in the new project file format.