Setting recovery options on windows services

Question

I\'ve recently written a small class to help me change recovery options on a windows service (most of code I found online somewhere). The code creates a FailureAction for t

Answer 1

The sc command provides a great way for automating service management. To call from code just do a Process.Start("sc", "args") and redirect the output if you want to get the result.

This one line tells the service to restart twice after waiting 1 min. on failure. After one day goes by it resets the failure count. You can also set it up to run programs, etc. on subsequent failures.

sc failure myservice reset= 86400 actions= restart/60000/restart/60000//

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742019(v=ws.10).aspx

Answer 2

I have discovered that all flavors of win 7 have no ability to restart some services even when their restart upon failure is set to yes.

I ended up writing a service to monitor start and stop status as well as (heuristics derived) responsiveness (eg hung not hung). Would you like that services code posted here?

Edit: Added the code

Ok, the following is the service code I referred to. Bear in mind:

• This code is designed to point to "C:\appMon" for logging, and cpu util. threshold values.
• This code is ugly in that it was cranked out while I was slammed with other priorities - as a result, it could be rewritten to handle any number of services, user defined log and cfg paths, etc.
• The service it was written for is the notorious windows spooler (spoolsv.exe).

To install the service, use installutil.exe from MS. Make sure the service runs as a "local system account" or it will not be able to start/stop services.

appMon.cs:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.ServiceProcess;
using System.Text;
using System.Timers;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO;
using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Threading;
using System.Management;

namespace appMon
{
    public class appMon : ServiceBase
    {
        public const string serviceName = "appMon";     
        public appMon()
        {
            InitializeComponent();          
        }       
        private void InitializeComponent()
        {
            this.ServiceName = serviceName;         
        }       
        /// <summary>
        /// Clean up any resources being used.
        /// </summary>
        protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
        {
            // free instantiated object resources not handled by garbage collector
            base.Dispose(disposing);
        }
        public static string getCurrUser()
        {// gets the owner of explorer.exe/UI to determine current logged in user
            String User = String.Empty;
            String Domain = String.Empty;
            String OwnerSID = String.Empty;
            string processname = String.Empty;
            int PID = Process.GetProcessesByName("explorer")[0].Id;
            ObjectQuery sq = new ObjectQuery
                ("Select * from Win32_Process Where ProcessID = '" + PID + "'");
            ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(sq);            
            foreach (ManagementObject oReturn in searcher.Get())
            {
                string[] o = new String[2];
                oReturn.InvokeMethod("GetOwner", (object[])o);
                User = o[0];
                System.IO.StreamWriter sr = new System.IO.StreamWriter(@"C:\user.txt");
                sr.WriteLine("\\" + o[2] + "\\" + o[1] + "\\" + o[0]);
                return User;
            }
            return User;
        }
        public static int readConfigFile()
        {
            int cputime = 5; // 5 min dflt
            try
            {
                string readcfg;
                readcfg = File.ReadAllText(@"c:\appMon\cpuUtilization.txt");
                cputime = Convert.ToInt16(readcfg);
                return cputime;
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(e.ToString());
                return cputime;  // 5 min dflt
            }
        }
        public static void logEvents(bool spoolerHang, bool appHang, string msg)
        {
            try
            {
                StreamWriter sw;
                sw = File.AppendText(@"c:\appMon\appMonLog.txt");
                sw.WriteLine(@"appMon spoolsv.exe event: " + "," + System.Environment.MachineName + "," + System.DateTime.Now + "," + msg);
                sw.Close();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(e.ToString());
            }
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Start this service.
        /// </summary> 
        protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
        {// upon appMon load, a polling interval is set (in milliseconds 1000 ms = 1 s)
            System.Timers.Timer pollTimer = new System.Timers.Timer();
            pollTimer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(pollTimer_Elapsed);
            pollTimer.Interval = 20000; // 20 sec
            pollTimer.Enabled = true;
        }
        public static void StartService(string serviceName, int timeoutMilliseconds)
        {
            ServiceController service = new ServiceController(serviceName);
            try
            {
                TimeSpan timeout = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(timeoutMilliseconds);
                if (service.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped) // if service is not running...
                {
                    service.Start(); // ...start the service
                }
            }
            catch(Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(e.ToString());
            }
        }
        public static void StopService(string serviceName, int timeoutMilliseconds)
        {
            ServiceController service = new ServiceController(serviceName);
            try
            {
                TimeSpan timeout = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(timeoutMilliseconds);
                if (service.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Running) // if service is running...
                {
                    service.Stop(); //...stop the service
                }
                service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, timeout);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(e.ToString());
            }
        }
        public static void delFiles(string path)
        {
            string[] filePaths = Directory.GetFiles(path);
            foreach (string filePath in filePaths)
            {
                try
                {
                    File.Delete(filePath);
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    // TODO:  !log to file instead!
                    MessageBox.Show("error deleting files: " + e.ToString());
                }
            }
        }
        public static void getServiceInfo(string serviceName)
        {
            ServiceController service = new ServiceController(serviceName);
            ServiceController[] depServices = service.ServicesDependedOn;
            List<string> depServicesList = new List<string>();
            foreach (ServiceController sc in depServices)
            {
                depServicesList.Add(sc.ServicesDependedOn.ToString());
                logEvents(false, false, sc.ServicesDependedOn.ToString());
            }

        }
        void pollTimer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
        {// polling interval has elapsed            
            getServiceInfo("spooler");
            ServiceController serviceSpooler = new ServiceController("spooler");
            if (serviceSpooler.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped)
            {
                logEvents(true, false, "Print Spooler is: " + serviceSpooler.Status.ToString());
                serviceSpooler.Refresh();
                serviceSpooler.Start();
                logEvents(true, false, "Print Spooler is: " + serviceSpooler.Status.ToString());
            }            
            int cputime = readConfigFile();
            // get active processes (exe's, including services)
            Process[] processlist = Process.GetProcesses();
            // iterate through process list
            foreach (Process theprocess in processlist)
            {
                // assign local variable to iterator - cures the foreach "gotcha"
                Process p = theprocess;
                if (p.ProcessName == "spoolsv") // "spoolsv" = windows name for spoolsv.exe aka "spooler"
                {
                    if (p.TotalProcessorTime.Minutes > cputime) // has current spooler thread occupied >= cputime # mins of CPU time? 
                    {
                        logEvents(true, false, "spoolsv.exe CPU time (mins): " + p.TotalProcessorTime.Minutes.ToString());
                        p.Refresh();
                        StopService("spooler", 0);
                        StartService("spooler", 0);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Stop this service.
        /// </summary>
        /// 
        protected override void OnStop()
        {
        }
    }
}