Unable to create a dev certificate for an ASP.NET Core Web App in a Docker container

Question

I'm trying to create a simple ASP.NET-Core 2.1 Web App that runs in Docker and forces HTTPS.

If I don't force HTTPS, the web app runs fine in the Docker instance. If I force HTTPS, or manually try to hit the HTTPS port, I get an "unable to connect" error or something nasty, like it.

So from my understanding, I need to somehow copy the trusted self-signed dev certification from my localhost development machine over to the Docker instance.

Luckily, there are some good docs that help explain/talk about this:

• https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/master/samples/aspnetapp/aspnetcore-docker-https-development.md
• https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/master/samples/aspnetapp/aspnetcore-docker-https.md
• https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/3310
• https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/6199

But everytime I try and start the first main step -> creating a cert, I get the following errors:

C:\Users\justi>dotnet dev-certs https --clean
Cleaning HTTPS development certificates from the machine. A prompt might get displayed to confirm the removal of some of the certificates.

C:\Users\justi>dotnet dev-certs https -ep %USERPROFILE%\.aspnet\https\hornet.apigateway.website.public.pfx -p secretpassword
A valid HTTPS certificate is already present.

But as you can see, I just tried to clean my cert store (which I did get asked to confirm the deleting of the cert) and then try to create a new one.

The above command was based on the examples in the links, above.

I feel like the error message is incorrect and the real error message isn't being displayed?

---

Update

Just in case I've messed up my Docker file stuff, here's my 2x docker-compose files:

docker-compose.yml

apigateway.website.public:
    image: hornet/apigateway.website.public
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: src/Api Gateways/ApiGateway.Website.Public/Dockerfile
    #ports:
    #  - "5000:443"
    depends_on:
      - microservice1.api
      - microservice2.api

docker-compose.override.yml

apigateway.website.public:
  environment:
    - ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Development
    - ASPNETCORE_URLS=https://localhost;http://localhost
    - ASPNETCORE_HTTPS_PORT=5001
  ports:
  # NOTE: need to copy the dev cert over to the container
  # REF:  o) https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/master/samples/aspnetapp/aspnetcore-docker-https-development.md
  #       o) https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet-docker/blob/master/samples/aspnetapp/aspnetcore-docker-https.md
  #       o) https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/3310
  #       o) https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/6199
    - "5000:80"
    - "5001:443"
  volumes:
    - ${APPDATA}/Microsoft/UserSecrets/:/root/.microsoft/usersecrets
    - ${APPDATA}/ASP.NET/Https:/root/.aspnet/https/

Answer 1

I recently got this to work for my project. I cribbed a lot of it from the Visual Studio Docker Compose files that were generated.

There are several differences that I see in your compose syntax that might be contributing to your issue.

First, your environment variables - I'm not sure what version of compose you're using. I was using 3.7 and I was able to define the variables this way:

      ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT: "Development"
      ASPNETCORE_URLS: "https://+:443;http://+:80"
      ASPNETCORE_HTTPS_PORT: "44371"

Notice that the main difference here is that I'm declaring my aspnetcore urls using a wild card character for the domain and declaring the port number directly after that https://+:443;http://+:80 as the internal port numbers

I was able to access the application exactly how I expected by https://localhost:44371.

I do still define ports in my compose file too, but I think the main thing here is that you need to tell aspnet core what the ports are via your ASPNETCORE_URLS environment variable. The ports declared in your compose file are informing your docker container, not your application.

So a compose file that may work for you would be the following:

apigateway.website.public:
  environment:
    ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT: "Development"
    ASPNETCORE_URLS: "https://+:443;http://+:80"
    ASPNETCORE_HTTPS_PORT: "5001"
  volumes:
    - ${APPDATA}/Microsoft/UserSecrets/:/root/.microsoft/usersecrets:ro
    - ${APPDATA}/ASP.NET/Https:/root/.aspnet/https:ro
  ports:
    - "5000:80"
    - "5001:443"

I also added the :ro (read only) indicator on your volumes as that seems to be a best practice.