dotnet-core/Documentation/build-and-install-rhel6-prerequisites.md

How to use .NET Core on RHEL 6 / CentOS 6

This document describes the prerequisites required to run .NET Core applications on RHEL / CentOS 6. Since this version is quite old, there are two runtime libraries that are not available as standard installation packages in versions that .NET Core can use, so they need to be obtained in different ways described in the sections below.

Required packages

.NET Core requires the following packages to be installed on RHEL 6:

• epel-release
• libunwind
• openssl
• libnghttp2
• libidn
• krb5-libs
• libuuid
• lttng-ust
• zlib

.NET Core also needs two runtime libraries - CURL and ICU - that are not available as RHEL 6 installation packages in versions that .NET Core relies on. CURL is required if the application references System.Net.Http.dll. ICU is needed except if globalization is disabled. Globalization can be disabled by setting the environment variable DOTNET_SYSTEM_GLOBALIZATION_INVARIANT to true or by adding System.Globalization.Invariant element set to true under configProperties in *.runtimeconfig.json file of the application. Here is an example for a console app:

{
    "runtimeOptions": {
        "configProperties": {
            "System.Globalization.Invariant": true
        },
    }
}

For more information about enabling or disabling the Globalization, you may refer to the Globalization Invariant Mode Doc

Getting the libraries that are not available as packages.

ICU

The ICU libraries can be downloaded as a precompiled binary from the ICU website, the URL is https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-57-1/icu4c-57_1-RHEL6-x64.tgz.

CURL

The CURL libraries need to be built from the source code. The source code can be obtained from the CURL website, the URL is https://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.45.0.tar.gz. To build it, follow the steps described below.

First install the prerequisites:

yum install -y \
    wget \
    epel-release

yum install -y \
    openssl-devel \
    libnghttp2-devel \
    libidn-devel \
    gcc

Now untar the source code

tar -xf curl-7.45.0.tar.gz

Change the current directory to where the CURL source code was untared:

cd curl-7.45.0

The following command performs the build with the right settings for .NET Core:

./configure \
    --disable-dict \
    --disable-file \
    --disable-ftp \
    --disable-gopher \
    --disable-imap \
    --disable-ldap \
    --disable-ldaps \
    --disable-libcurl-option \
    --disable-manual \
    --disable-pop3 \
    --disable-rtsp \
    --disable-smb \
    --disable-smtp \
    --disable-telnet \
    --disable-tftp \
    --enable-ipv6 \
    --enable-optimize \
    --enable-symbol-hiding \
    --with-ca-bundle=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt \
    --with-nghttp2 \
    --with-gssapi \
    --with-ssl \
    --without-librtmp \
    --prefix=$PWD/install/usr/local \
&& \
make install

Now pack the compiled CURL:

cd install
tar -czf curl-7_45_0-RHEL6-x64.tgz *

Making the libraries available for a .NET Core application

There are several ways to do this. The following paragraphs describe them.

Install the libraries into /usr/local

First untar the .tgz files as follows:

tar -xf curl-7_45_0-RHEL6-x64.tgz -C /
tar -xf icu4c-57_1-RHEL6-x64.tgz -C /

Then set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to /usr/local/lib before running the application:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib your_dotnet_app

Important - please make sure that you do not set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH using export in your current shell or even globally for your session. Linux applications that depend on the default CURL (like the yum) would stop working.

Install the libraries into the netcoredeps subdirectory of your .NET Core application

This works only for self-contained published apps. Create the netcoredeps subdirectory in the same directory where your apps main executable is located. Then change the current directory to the netcoredeps and extract the libraries into that directory as follows:

tar -xf /your/path/to/curl-7_45_0-RHEL6-x64.tgz --strip-components=3 usr/local/lib/*.so*
tar -xf /your/path/to/icu4c-57_1-RHEL6-x64.tgz --strip-components=3 usr/local/lib/*.so*

(replace the /your/path/to/ by the real path to the tar file)

For the app developers – pack the libraries with your application

The steps are the same as for the previous option, but they are done by the app developer. The app is then packaged including the libraries.

Troubleshooting

Q1: I try to run a .NET Core application on RHEL 6 / CentOS 6 and I get the following exception:

FailFast: Couldn't find a valid ICU package installed on the system. Set the configuration flag System.Globalization.Invariant to true if you want to run with no globalization support.

   at System.Environment.FailFast(System.String)
   at System.Globalization.GlobalizationMode.GetGlobalizationInvariantMode()
   at System.Globalization.GlobalizationMode..cctor()
   at System.Globalization.CultureData.CreateCultureWithInvariantData()
   at System.Globalization.CultureData.get_Invariant()
   at System.Globalization.CultureData.GetCultureData(System.String, Boolean)
   at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InitializeFromName(System.String, Boolean)
   at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.Init()
   at System.Globalization.CultureInfo..cctor()
   at System.StringComparer..cctor()
   at System.AppDomainSetup.SetCompatibilitySwitches(System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<System.String>)
   at System.AppDomain.PrepareDataForSetup(System.String, System.AppDomainSetup, System.String[], System.String[])
Aborted (core dumped)

A1: The ICU libraries were not extracted from icu4c-57_1-RHEL6-x64.tgz to the right place, or LD_LIBRARY_PATH was not set to /usr/local/lib. See the Making the libraries available for a .NET Core application section.

Q2: I try to run a .NET Core application on RHEL 6 / CentOS 6 and I get the exception similar to the following one:

dotnet: symbol lookup error: System.Net.Http.Native.so: undefined symbol: curl_multi_wait

A2: The CURL libraries were not extracted from curl-7_45_0-RHEL6-x64.tgz to the right place, or LD_LIBRARY_PATH was not set to /usr/local/lib. See the Making the libraries available for a .NET Core application section.