Dotnet app as SystemD Service: System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'connectionString')

Question

I have a C# DotNet 5 worker which connects to a database and do various stuff.

If I deploy the app in a AlmaLinux x64 environment and execute it as normal application, it works everything.

When I try to execute as Systemd service I have the following error

unhandled exception. System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'connectionString')

This is my appsettings.json

{
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Warning",
      "Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Warning"
    }
  },
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "connectionString": "Server=192.168.0.191;Database=new_centrex_db;Password=[REDACTED];UID=[REDACTED]"
  },
  "apiconfig": {
    "apiUrl": "https://example.org/theApi",
    "authHeaderName": "X-authenticate"
  }
}

this is the unit file:

[Unit]
Description=Test

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/utente/publish/CentrexNotificatorD
User=utente
Group=utente

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I tried with and without User and Group and Type with simple and notify, with no luck. The permissions are ugo+rw for all the files, and ugo+rx for the executable.

Of course I'm using .UseSystemd() inside the program.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Found the problem: I had to put a WorkingDirectory in the .service file pointing the directory where the service is. In this case /home/utente/publish