Diffs for running svnserve as a Win32 service
From: Arlie Davis <adavis_at_stonestreetone.com>
Date: 2006-02-23 02:26:09 CET
Ok, here's the first cut of the service implementation. I welcome feedback,
Thanks.
-- arlie
Windows Service Support for svnserve
This patch allows svnserve to run as a Windows service.
This patch was written by Arlie Davis, February 2006. Please send all
*** NOTE: This patch is NOT yet ready for prime time! It still needs
-- Arlie Davis adavis@stonestreetone.com arlie@sublinear.org Installation ------------ For now, no means is provided to install the service. Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server provide a command-line tool for installing services. To create a service for svnserve, invoke SC.EXE like so: sc create <name> binpath= "c:\svn\bin\svnserve.exe --service <svn-args>" where <name> is any service name you want, e.g. "svnserve", and <svn-args> are the arguments to svnserve, such as --root, --listen-port, etc. In order for svnserve to run as a Windows service, you MUST specify the --service argument, and you must NOT specify any other run mode argument, such as --daemon, --tunnel, --inetd, or any of their short forms. There is no short form for --service. SC has many options; use "sc /?". The most useful are: sc create <name> create a new service sc qc <name> query config for a service sc query <name> query status sc delete <name> delete any service -- BE CAREFUL! sc config <name> ... update service config; same args as sc create sc start <name> start a service (does NOT wait for completion!) sc stop <name> stop a service (does NOT wait for it to stop!) Note that the command-line syntax for SC is rather odd. Key/value pairs are specified as "key= value". The "key=" part must not have any spaces, and the "value" part MUST be separated from the "key=" by a space. If you want to be able to see the command shell, add these arguments to the "sc create" command-line: type= own type= interact This sets the "interactive" bit on the service, which allows it to interact with the local console session. You can create as many services as you like; there is no restriction on the number of services, or their names. I use a prefix, like "svn.foo", "svn.bar", etc. Each service runs in a separate process. Uninstalling ------------ To uninstall a service, stop the service, then delete it. That's all there is to it. Running on Startup ------------------ By default, SC creates the service with the start mode set to "demand" (manual). If you want the service to start automatically when the system boots, add "start= auto" to the command line. You can change the start mode for an existing service using "sc config <name> start= auto", or also by using the Windows GUI interface for managing services. (Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Services, or just run "services.msc" from Start/Run or from a command-line.) Starting and Stopping the Service --------------------------------- You start and stop the service like any other Windows service. You can use the command-line "net start <name>", use the GUI Services interface. Debugging --------- Debugging a Windows service can be difficult, because the service runs in a very different context than a user who is logged in. By default, services run in a "null" desktop environment. They cannot interact with the user (desktop) in any way, and vice versa. Also, by default, services run as a special user, called LocalSystem. LocalSystem is not a "user" in the normal sense; it is an NT security ID (SID) that is sort of like root, but different. LocalSystem typically does NOT have access to any network shares, even if you use "net use" to connect to a remote file server. Again, this is because services run in a different login session. Depending on which OS you are running, you may have difficulty attaching a debugger to a running service process. Also, if you are having trouble *starting* a service, then you can't attach to the process early enough to debug it. So what's a developer to do? Well, there are several ways you can debug services. First, you'll want to enable "interactive" access for the service. This allows the service to interact with the local desktop -- you'll be able to see the command shell that the service runs in, see console output, etc. To do this, you can either use the standard Windows Services tool (services.msc), or you can do it using sc.exe. * With the GUI tool, open the properties page for a service, and go to the "Log On" page. Select "Local System account", and make sure the "Allow service to interact with desktop" box is checked. * With SC.EXE, configure the service using the command: sc <name> config type= own type= interact Yes, you must specify type= twice, and with exactly the spacing shown. In both cases, you'll need to restart the service. When you do, if the service started successfully, you'll see the console window of the service. By default, it doesn't print anything out. Next, you'll want to attach a debugger, or configure the service to start under a debugger. Attaching a debugger should be straightforward -- just find the process ID. But if you need to debug something in the service startup path, you'll need to have a debugger attached from the very beginning. There are two ways to do this. In the first method, you alter the command-line of the service (called the "binary path"). To do this, use SC.EXE to set the binary path to whatever debugger you are going to use. I use the most recent version of WinDbg, which is excellent, and is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx For example, this command would configure the service to start under a debugger: sc config <name> binpath= "d:\dbg\windbg.exe -g -G d:\svn\bin\svnserve.exe --root d:\path\root --listen-port 9000" The entire command must be on a single line, of course, and the binary path must be in double-quotes. Also, the spacing MUST be: binpath= "..." Substitute whatever debugger you want, with whatever command-line you want, in place of windbg.exe. Then start the service (sc start <name>), and the Service Control Manager should execute the command-line you provided as the binary path. Then your debugger should start, and should launch the svnserve process. Known Issues ------------ * Source code does not (yet) conform to SVN conventions. Yes, I plan on editing it so that it does. * No management tool (installer, etc.). For the first revision, this is intentional; we just want to get the service functionality tested and committed before dealing with installation. * Right now, I don't know of a way to cleanly stop the svnserve process. Instead, the implementation closes the listen socket, which causes the main loop to exit. This isn't as bad as it sounds, and is a LOT better than other options (such as terminating a thread).
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