Skip to main content

ASP.NET Core IIS - Application failed to start process with commandline '%LAUNCHER_PATH% %LAUNCHER_ARGS%'

After deploying an ASP.NET Core application to IIS, it failed to start with the following error message:

Application 'MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST/SampleApp/' with physical root 'C:\Sites\sampleapp\' failed to start process with commandline '%LAUNCHER_PATH% %LAUNCHER_ARGS%', ErrorCode = '0x80070002' : 0.

So what is going on?

By default when you add a web.config file to your ASP.NET core project, the following configuration is added:

You see the 2 environment variables'(%LAUNCHER_PATH%, %LAUNCHER_ARGS%) that are added to the config and also mentioned in the error message above. These 2 variables are their for Visual Studio and are replaced by Visual Studio when you try build and run your app.

For example when you do a debug build, the web.config is transformed to:

<aspNetCore processPath="C:\Program Files\dotnet\dotnet.exe" arguments="exec &quot;C:\projects\sampleapp\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.2\sampleapp.dll&quot;" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" />

MsBuild applies the same magic when you package and deploy your application. The problem was that we were using web.config transformations. These web.config transformation were executed after the ‘replace magic’ re-introducing these placeholder variables. This meant we ended up with these placeholders in our deployed application where IIS had no clue what to do with it.

More information here: https://github.com/vijayrkn/webconfigtransform/blob/master/README.md

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

.NET 8–Keyed/Named Services

A feature that a lot of IoC container libraries support but that was missing in the default DI container provided by Microsoft is the support for Keyed or Named Services. This feature allows you to register the same type multiple times using different names, allowing you to resolve a specific instance based on the circumstances. Although there is some controversy if supporting this feature is a good idea or not, it certainly can be handy. To support this feature a new interface IKeyedServiceProvider got introduced in .NET 8 providing 2 new methods on our ServiceProvider instance: object? GetKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); object GetRequiredKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); To use it, we need to register our service using one of the new extension methods: Resolving the service can be done either through the FromKeyedServices attribute: or by injecting the IKeyedServiceProvider interface and calling the GetRequiredKeyedServic...
Read more

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.
Read more

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...
Read more