Dev certificate on aspnetcore docker container

Question

I'm new to Docker and I have run into a trouble running my app in docker due missing ssl certificates. How do I run aspnetcore application in docker with non-development environment using dev certificates?

I have the following Dockerfile generated by Visual Studio:

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:6.0 AS base
WORKDIR /app
EXPOSE 80
EXPOSE 443

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:6.0 AS build
WORKDIR /src
COPY ["MyApp/MyApp.csproj", "MyApp/"]
COPY [...other libraries...]
RUN dotnet restore "MyApp/MyApp.csproj"
COPY . .
WORKDIR "/src/MyApp"
RUN dotnet build "MyApp.csproj" -c Release -o /app/build

FROM build AS publish
RUN dotnet publish "MyApp.csproj" -c Release -o /app/publish

FROM base AS final
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=publish /app/publish .
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "MyApp.dll"]

When I run it from the Visual Studio with the default setup (development), it connects Docker and everything runs fine. However, I want to use a different appsettings file (appsettings.docker.json) because I need some different values when running in Docker and I'm already using my appsettings.development.json for my standard run from the VS. Thus I set ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Docker. This is causing a pain as I'm suddenly getting an InvalidOperationException:

System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to configure HTTPS endpoint. No server certificate was specified, and the default developer certificate could not be found or is out of date.

To generate a developer certificate run 'dotnet dev-certs https'. To trust the certificate (Windows and macOS only) run 'dotnet dev-certs https --trust'.

Based on this answer, I have figured out that dotnet generates the dev certs automagically when the environment variable is Development. How can that be fixed for a differently called environment?

I did try to use the dotnet dev-certs https command in the Dockerfile, however, build failed saying that there is no sdk in the image and thus doesn't know the command.

Answer 1

Try adding these 2 lines

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:6.0 AS base
WORKDIR /app
EXPOSE 80
EXPOSE 443

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:6.0 AS build
# Add the line below ---------------------------------------------------
RUN dotnet dev-certs https
WORKDIR /src
COPY ["MyApp/MyApp.csproj", "MyApp/"]
COPY [...other libraries...]
RUN dotnet restore "MyApp/MyApp.csproj"
COPY . .
WORKDIR "/src/MyApp"
RUN dotnet build "MyApp.csproj" -c Release -o /app/build

FROM build AS publish
RUN dotnet publish "MyApp.csproj" -c Release -o /app/publish

FROM base AS final
WORKDIR /app
# Add the line below ---------------------------------------------------
COPY --from=publish /root/.dotnet/corefx/cryptography/x509stores/my/* /root/.dotnet/corefx/cryptography/x509stores/my/
COPY --from=publish /app/publish .
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "MyApp.dll"]