Troubleshooting Docker Startup

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Article Goal

Trouble shoot docker startup challenges

In this article we are going to cover the steps to trouble shoot challenges with the Docker startup. Startup logging was added that will go into \App_Data\Logs\Log.txt when there is a startup/communication failure with MS SQL.  This article assumes you've already completed the steps detailed in WebReports Setup for Windows Docker – BridgeWorks Help Center (bridgeworksllc.com)

Steps To Troubleshoot Docker Startup.

1. To keep the BridgeWorksWR container up and running for troubleshooting, adjust the appsettings.json Default Connection string time out to 600 seconds.  This will provide 10 minutes of uptime before the MS SQL Connection times out.

2. Copy the updated appsettings.json file with the 600 second Connect Time out back to the container. 

docker cp c:\temp\appsettings.json BridgeWorksWR:/app/

3. Start the container with the following command:

docker start BridgeWorksWR

4. Connect to the BridgeWorksWR container using the following command:

docker exec -it BridgeWorksWR /bin/sh

5. Navigate the to the \App_Data\Logs directory (one at a time)

cd \App_Data

then

cd \Logs

6. View the Log.txt file using the cat command

cat Log.txt

Any errors will be visible in the logs (see screenshot below). 

Note: Additional startup logging is available in newer versions as of May 6th, 2026. See Step 7 for more advanced troubleshooting.

7. Review StartupLog.txt and Docker Logs for Configuration Errors (v2026)

If no clear issue is found in Log.txt, additional startup logging is now available to help identify configuration-related failures.

a. Review Docker startup logs
Run the following command from the host machine:

docker logs BridgeWorksWR

This will display application startup errors, including configuration and parsing failures.

b. Review the StartupLog.txt file inside the container
Navigate to:

/App_Data/Logs/StartupLog.txt

View the file:

cat StartupLog.txt

c. What to look for
This log captures startup failures such as:

• Invalid or malformed appsettings.json
  • Missing/extra braces or commas
  • Unescaped characters (e.g., semicolons in connection strings)
  • Empty or improperly structured JSON
• Database connection issues
  • Timeouts
  • Invalid credentials
• Other application startup exceptions

d. Expected behavior

• If startup fails, detailed error messages will appear in both docker logs and StartupLog.txt
• If startup succeeds, logs will show normal initialization steps

This is the expected output for a normal startup.