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# How to troubleshoot Ghost installations & upgrades on Azure
- URL: https://codeisahighway.com/how-to-troubleshoot-ghost-installations-and-upgrades-on-azure/
- Published: 2015-11-07T00:58:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-10T07:12:34.000Z
- Author: Stephane Lapointe
- Tags: Ghost, Node.js, Troubleshooting, Microsoft Azure, #Import 2023-07-11 16:44, #Import 2026-09-04 10:31, #Import 2026-09-04 13:56

I recently upgraded a Ghost site from a quite old version to a new one and like we often see it in a deployment... it did not went as expected. Let me tell you what I did to solve the problem so that it may save you some time if you encounter hat kind of problems with your Ghost deployment on Azure.

## All I see is a blank window

Right after my deployment, I tried to hit the website to see if everything was OK... No error in the browser was shown but only a blank white page without any information.

![Blank site in error](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/SiteInErrorIsBlank.png)

This is not what I expected, but how can you get more information when this happen on a web application where you cannot remote desktop on the machine behind?

## Say hello to the Kudu console!

The Kudu console is a very helpful tool to get into the core of your web app, it enable you to perform tons of actions behind the scene.

In this example, the site is named *ghost-azure5938*, which resolve to a url like: *ghost-azure5938.azurewebsites.net*. To access the Kudu console, you need to insert **scm** in the url like this:  
*ghost-azure5938.*scm*.azurewebsites.net*

![Kudu home](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/KuduHome.png)

> I cannot emphasize enough that killing a process/deleting files can cause strange behaviors and may lead to data loss. Make sure you have a backup of your files before going further.

## View Ghost error logs

![PowerShell console in Kudu](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/KuduOpenPowerShellConsole.png)

Now that you are in Kudu, we'll go see our node.js stderr logs. Open a PowerShell console using the menu at the top.

Browse to *site/wwwroot/iisnode* and click edit (pencil button) to view the logs you are interested in, in my case, I checked one with *stderr* (error) in the filename.

![iisnode folder from console](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/KuduGhostLogsInIISNodeFolder.png)

![Error log in edit mode in Kudu](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/KuduGhostErrorLogEditMode.png)  
As you can see I have a problem with a dependency: sqlite3

In my case, I did the `npm install --production` command as instructed in the error message but it didn't help at all. I suspected a npm cache problem so I decided to delete the whole *site/wwwroot/node\_modules* folder thinking maybe an older dependency version was causing a problem during modules installation. I tried to delete *node\_modules* completely but the node.exe process was locking a dependency. To help here I needed to kill the node.exe process.

## Kill node.js process

Browse to *Process explorer* and click on the *Properties* button of node.exe  
![Process explorer in Kudu](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/KuduProcessExplorer.png)

Browse to the bottom of the details window and you'll have the option to kill the process, this is what I've done in my case.

I went back in a PowerShell console to the *site/wwwroot/node\_modules* and was able to delete the whole folder without problem.

Now I needed to tell npm to reinstall all modules but the cache caused me problems before. Here is the commands I ran while being in the *site/wwwroot* folder:

![npm commands in wwwroot folder](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/KuduNpmCommands.png)

```
npm cache clean
grunt clean
npm install --production

```

After doing that, I tried to hit my website again and everything lifted as expected.

![Fixed and working Ghost installation](https://codeisahighway.com/content/images/2015/11/WorkingGhostWebsite.png)

Hope it help you diagnose Ghost dependencies problems on Azure and where to look to have more information from node.js logs.

## Resources

- [Ghost-Azure](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/Ghost-Azure?ref=codeisahighway.com)
- [Felix Rieseberg](https://github.com/felixrieseberg?ref=codeisahighway.com)
- [Using KUDU with Microsoft Azure Web Apps](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/benjaminperkins/archive/2014/03/24/using-kudu-with-windows-azure-web-sites.aspx?ref=codeisahighway.com)
- [What is Kudu? - Azure Web Sites Deployment with David Ebbo](https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/What-is-Kudu-Azure-Web-Sites-Deployment-with-David-Ebbo?ref=codeisahighway.com)