Debugging service installation problems

Debugging service installation problems

Having trouble running or installing your IntraWeb application as a service? Here are some tips.

Installation

Services can be installed and uninstalled by running the application with -install or -uninstall. After installation the service will be listed in the services control panel applet. After installation you will need to start the service the first time. After that by default it will start automatically during boot unless you change the settings.

IntraWeb uses the ServerController.AppName property for the service name. Service names cannot contain spaces or other off beat characters, and cannot start with a number. So “My App” and “360Server” are not valid names and will cause your service to fail during installation.

If an error occurs during initialization, an exename.err file will be generated in the same directory as your service. So if your service executable is called MyApp.exe, look for a MyApp.err. It is a text file and contains useful information. For example:

16/09/2008 16:26:22 Error: ”My App” is not a valid component name
16/09/2008 17:31:13 Error: ”100MyApp” is not a valid component name

Permissions

If your application installs but has trouble running, check the permissions. Services by default run as the system user. The system user has access to most external files, but certain things like network and mapped drives act differently and may not be available.

Try running your service as an administrator. If that works you should not leave it that way, but it gives you a clue as to the problem. You can make another user to run the service as if it requires a resource only available to logged on users, or check permissions of required external files or connections with respect to the system account.