Cannot get it to work changing the API port

[Hallsie]

I am following the directions...

cd /
mkdir cset
cd cset
git clone https://github.com/cisagov/cset
cp .env.example ./.env
nano .env         change api port to 5555, save, and exit
docker compose up -d

Note: I want to change the API port as I am already using 5000 on this server for another service.

I get the notice that everything is created and started. I check docker ps to make sure it looks right:
e06058a714a2 ghcr.io/cisagov/cset/api:latest "dotnet CSETWebCore.…" About a minute ago Up About a minute 0.0.0.0:5555->5000/tcp, [::]:5555->5000/tcp cset-api

I give it a moment to make sure everything that needs to talk to one another does so. I hit http://IP:4200 and get the login page. About 3 seconds later big red bar: No Server Connection [Details]

I get the following message:
The server cannot be reached. Please contact a system administrator to verify that the server URL is properly configured and that the CSET API is running.

Server URL
http://localhost:5555/

That SHOULD be correct as 5555 is the API port and it should be looking at localhost unless I am understanding something incorrectly. I went back through the .env and the config.yml and I do not see any place

I posted about this before and I thought it was resolved. Am I doing something incorrectly?

[Hallsie]

After a two hour talk with ChatGPT and a lot of trial and error/troubleshooting with ChatGPT we fixed it.

[martbillinl]

@Hallsie what did you change to get it working for you?

[Hallsie]

@martbillinl I was afraid someone would ask. There was a lot.

For starters for some reason the databasees didn't get created so I had to run the scripts to create those manually from the backup:

cat backup/bak-files/CSET.bak.part_* > backup/CSET.bak
ls -lh backup/CSET.bak

docker exec -i cset-mssql /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U 'sa' -P "Password123" -i /var/opt/mssql/backup/restoredb.sql

docker exec -it cset-mssql /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S localhost -U sa -P 'Password123' -Q "SELECT name FROM sys.databases;"

docker exec -i cset-mssql /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -U 'sa' -P "Password123" -i /var/opt/mssql/backup/restoredb.sql

docker exec -it cset-mssql /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S localhost -U sa -P 'Password123' -Q "SELECT name FROM sys.databases;"

Then it pointed to CORS. I changed the .env file with the following:

Cors__AllowedOrigins__0=http://localhost:4200
Cors__AllowedOrigins__1=http://[HOST IP ADDRESS]:4200

That didn't seem to work so it had me do this:

printf '\nCors__AllowedOrigins__0=http://localhost:4200\nCors__AllowedOrigins__1=http://[HOST IP ADDRESS]:4200\n' | tee -a [path to]/cset/.env

docker compose up -d --force-recreate api

I hope that makes sense to someone who knows what they are doing. I do not. I had a 100% test machine that I started fresh and let ChatGPTJesus take the keyboard and see what happens.

I believe that was the commands I ran. There were tons and tons of commands to check various things that it had me do. It was the longest GPT conversation I have had and it was slowly chugging along at the end taking a while to type out the things it was asking me to do/explaining.

If you have any further questions then I'll be happy to answer.

My best guess is that because I changed the API port something didn't connect and errored out early in the initial building of the containers and some scripts didn't run and one of those may have been database creation and/or the CORS piece.

There was one other thing that I did see that I did but I do not think it mattered because both should have worked and I do believe I either ignored that or backtracked that command. It was changing a config file to hard code the IP instead of using 0.0.0.0. Shouldn't have mattered.

[Hallsie]

to add.... the commands in that there were done one at a time. Some were run this and then run another thing to check and then run this. So I just put a space between as they were broken up.

[igorbarney]

I'm getting the login screen over the port 4200, however, it shows a red warning "No Server Connection", I clicked on "Details" and got this message
"The server cannot be reached. Please contact a system administrator to verify that the server URL is properly configured and that the CSET API is running.

Server URL
http://localhost:4200:5002/
"
I was troubleshooting the issue with my docker desktop app AI and this is what it suggested:
"The application deployment is configured, but the .NET API backend has a routing/initialization issue that requires either a fix to the Docker image or additional configuration beyond environment variables."

Any thoughts?

[randywoods]

It looks like the URL it's trying to talk to the API on is not correct.

If your API container is listening on port :5002 and running on your localhost, the URL should look like
http://localhost:5002

The URL elements are configured in the config.json in the UI's assets/settings folder:

  "api": {
    "protocol": "http",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": "5002",
    "apiIdentifier": "api",
    "documentsIdentifier": "Documents"
  },

An easy way to see if you can hit the API from your local machine is to navigate to this endpoint in a browser:
http://localhost:5002/api/version

Use the hostname and port that are correct to your installation, of course.

[igorbarney]

After I pushed the suggested changes and using AI for fixing this issue I got finally working the login screen, however, after registering the new account I haven't received the temporary password yet. below the output for http://localhost:5002/api/version/: {"codebaseVersion":{"majorVersion":13,"minorVersion":0,"build":0,"revision":0},"databaseVersion":{"majorVersion":12,"minorVersion":4,"build":0,"revision":4}} This is my .env configuration: WEB_PORT=4200 WEB_TLS_PORT=443 API_PORT=5002 # MSSQL Server MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD=Password123 ACCEPT_EULA=Y API_HOST=localhost Cors__AllowedOrigins__0=http://localhost:4200 API_URL=http://localhost:5002 Cors__AllowedOrigins__1=http://192.168.1.179:4200

…

On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 3:28 PM Randy Woods ***@***.***> wrote: *randywoods* left a comment (cisagov/cset#5332) <#5332 (comment)> It looks like the URL it's trying to talk to the API on is not correct. If your API container is listening on port :5002 and running on your localhost, the URL should look like http://localhost:5002 The URL elements are configured in the config.json in the UI's assets/settings folder: "api": { "protocol": "http", "host": "localhost", "port": "5002", "apiIdentifier": "api", "documentsIdentifier": "Documents" }, An easy way to see if you can hit the API from your local machine is to navigate to this endpoint in a browser: http://localhost:5002/api/version Use the hostname and port that are correct to your installation, of course. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#5332?email_source=notifications&email_token=ALUNNIGLNCZGHRVMEE5HKST4W7KYLA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTIMRZGE2TMNJTGI32M4TFMFZW63VHMNXW23LFNZ2KKZLWMVXHJLDGN5XXIZLSL5RWY2LDNM#issuecomment-4291565327>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ALUNNIDMNXEO3BULHTUFQED4W7KYLAVCNFSM6AAAAACTFU33HKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHM2DEOJRGU3DKMZSG4> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[randywoods]

CSET does not include a built-in SMTP server. Email functionality requires an SMTP server to be configured in the Email section of appsettings.json before use.