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Updating Signer from 1.x to 2.x

Before updating your on-premises instance from version 1.x to a 2.x version, you must follow a few extra steps.

1. Install the ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0

Please refer to the Install the ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0 section of the installation procedure corresponding to your platform:

Tip

It is not necessary to uninstall previous versions of ASP.NET Core Runtime, multiple versions can co-exist in the same system without issues

Note

On Docker this step is not necessary since the new 2.x image already ships with the ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0 embedded

2. Set an explicit AppDiscriminator

Check if your configuration file contains a setting named AppDiscriminator on the General section (or General__AppDiscriminator if using environment variables). If there is such a setting and it is filled, skip to the next step. If there is no such setting (or if it has an empty value), proceed with the following instructions.

Open the application log and look for the following entry:

Application starting: Lacuna Signer (version: *, spaVersion: *, appDiscriminator: 'YOUR_APP_DISCRIMINATOR')
                                                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Copy the value of the appDiscriminator field without the surrounding single quotes (on the example above the correct value would be YOUR_APP_DISCRIMINATOR, not 'YOUR_APP_DISCRIMINATOR') and add the AppDiscriminator setting on the General section of your configuration file with that value.

Example (.ini or .conf file):

[General]
AppDiscriminator=YOUR_APP_DISCRIMINATOR

Example (environment variables):

General__AppDiscriminator=YOUR_APP_DISCRIMINATOR

Next, restart the application and check the logs again. A new "application starting" log should be registered, with no change to the appDiscriminator field.

3. Serilog Changes

Some Serilog parameters have changed because the library was updated. Check the section Serilog of your app settings and make changes according to the directions below:

  • Windows:
    • If you have RollingFile specified, replace it with File and the property pathFormat with path. In order to maintain rolling behavior add "rollingInterval": "Day".
  • Azure:
    • If you are hosting Signer on Azure (and have the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT setting set to Azure), default Serilog settings have been added so now it's only required to define the Serilog__WriteTo__0__Args__connectionString property in order to direct logs to a table of a Storage Account.
    • If you have Serilog__WriteTo__0__Name set to AzureTableStorageWithProperties, remove it or replace it with AzureTableStorage.

4. Database Changes

The SQL Server minimum version was updated to SQL Server 2016 (13.x). To revert the compatibility to SQL Server 2014, add the setting SqlServer__CompatibilityLevel with value 120.

5. Update Signer

After following the steps above, proceed with the update instructions.

Troubleshooting certificate errors on SQL Server

Unlike on .NET 6, the new standard on .NET 8 is for the SQL server certificate to be validated. This might cause your instance to crash when starting, with the following error appearing on the logs:

Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: 'A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 - The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted.)'

In that case, ensure that your SQL Server is configured with a trusted TLS certificate and that it has not expired.

If you prefer to bypass the SQL Server certificate validation, append ;TrustServerCertificate=True to the database connection string on the configuration file.

Troubleshooting Database timeout after update

If you experience an application error after updating and the log indicates that there was a timeout applying database migrations, you should run the command line utility to manually trigger migrations with an increased timeout parameter:

  1. Stop the application.
  2. Navigate to the application binaries folder.
  3. Execute the command: dotnet Lacuna.Signer.Site.dll -- update-db AddFontSize --timeout 6000
  4. Restart the application.

Azure App Services

If your Amplia instance is hosted on Azure App Services:

  1. On the Azure Portal, enter your App Service configuration
  2. Click on Configuration, then select the General settings tab
  3. On the Stack settings section:
    1. The Stack setting should be set to .NET
    2. The .NET version setting, should be set to .NET 8 (LTS)
Tip

The Stack settings section mentioned above is only shown if the App Service Plan is Windows-based. Otherwise, for Linux-based plans, no changes are needed.