cruelty has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

G'day,

I'm trying to set up a service on Windows NT using Dave Roths Win32::Daemon module. When I try to start it, after waiting for about 3 minutes, I'm getting the following message : "Service is not responding to the control function".

This seems to be caused by using self written modules. If I remove 'use testPackage', everything seems to run normal and the service gets started.

Did anyone already strugle with this problem before ?

Many thanks in advance,
Cruelty.

------------ 

package testPackage;

sub new {
my $that  = shift;
my $class = ref($that) || $that;
my $self;
$self->{DEBUG} = shift;
bless $self, $class;
return $self;
}

1;

-----------

use Win32::Daemon;
use strict;
use testPackage;

my $LOGFILE = "test.log";

sub verbose {
warn "TRACE ($$) : $_[0]";
}

open (STDERR, ">$LOGFILE") || die "cannot open log file $LOGFILE\n";

Win32::Daemon::StartService();

my $prevState = SERVICE_STOPPED;

while (SERVICE_STOPPED != ( my $State = Win32::Daemon::State() ) ) {

if ( SERVICE_START_PENDING == $State ) {
    Win32::Daemon::State( SERVICE_RUNNING );
$prevState = SERVICE_RUNNING;
verbose("$0 started at " . localtime().$/);
  }
  elsif ( SERVICE_PAUSE_PENDING == $State ) {
    verbose("Pausing Service\n");
    Win32::Daemon::State( SERVICE_PAUSED );
    $prevState = SERVICE_PAUSED;
    next;
  }
  elsif ( SERVICE_CONTINUE_PENDING == $State ) {
    verbose("Resuming Service\n");
    Win32::Daemon::State( SERVICE_RUNNING ); 
    $prevState = SERVICE_RUNNING;
    next;
  }
  elsif ( SERVICE_STOP_PENDING == $State ) {
    verbose("Service Stopping");
    Win32::Daemon::State( SERVICE_STOPPED ); 
    $prevState = SERVICE_STOPPED;
    next;
  }
  elsif ( SERVICE_RUNNING == $State ) {
    if ($DEBUG) { verbose("Service Running"); }
    if ( $DEBUG ) { verbose ("Waiting 100 seconds to continue\n"); }
    sleep(100);
  }
  else { # unknown state : reset to previous state
    Win32::Daemon::State( $prevState );
  }

  sleep(1);
}

Win32::Daemon::StopService();

[download]

Edit kudra, 2001-09-17 Added code tags

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Win32::Daemon problem
by $code or die (Deacon) on Sep 17, 2001 at 22:44 UTC 
    #...snip
elsif ( SERVICE_RUNNING == $State ) {
    if ($DEBUG) { verbose("Service Running"); }
    if ( $DEBUG ) { verbose ("Waiting 100 seconds to continue\n"); }
    sleep(100);
}

#...snip

    [download]
    I think you want to reduce that sleep 100 to something smaller, like sleep 2. If you need a longer sleep, then split it up and do a Win32::Daemon::State() call between each one. The Win32 service control manager polls all active services every now and then and it needs to receive a response within 15 seconds or so, otherwise it says that the service isn't responding. IIRC, Dave mentions this in the docs.

    As for whether this fixes your problem, I can't say at the moment - I don't have a Win32 machine to test it on right now.

    Hope this helps.

    __________________________________________________________
    Simon Flack ($code or die)
    $,=reverse'"ro_';s,$,\$,;s,$,lc ref sub{},e;$,
    =~y'_"' ';eval"die";print $_,lc substr$@,0,3;
[reply]
[d/l]

      You're right, thanks for the spot but that's not what was causing the problem.

      After some research, I found that the real problem was that the perl interpreter wasn't able to find the package I was trying to include because the service gets started from a different directory than the one where I placed my script and module.

      This problem is now solved by adding the directory to the @INC list :

      use lib "c:/mypath";

      Regards,

      <ruelty

[reply]
        Ahh. I've run into similar problems before. Win32 services are more difficult to debug because you can't see what's going on. What I've done in the past is log errors to a text file. This is fine for development, but in production you probably want to use the Event Log, with Win32::EventLog or Win32::EventLog::Message - I don't have a link, but I think it's another one of Dave Roth's.

        I find something along these lines useful:
        BEGIN
{
   $SIG{__WARN__} = $SIG{__DIE__} =
       sub {
              open ERRORLOG, ">>/myerror.log" or
                   die "error opening logfile";
              print ERRORLOG, scalar localtime, " - $0\n", @_, "\n\n";
              close ERRORLOG;
           }
}

        [download]
        I think this would have caught your problem and written it to a log file.

        John M. Dlugosz pointed out recently that you can also use Win32::MessageBox from within a Service. So you could replace that logfile with a more immediate and visual prompt.

        Simon Flack ($code or die)
        $,=reverse'"ro_';s,$,\$,;s,$,lc ref sub{},e;$,
        =~y'_"' ';eval"die";print $_,lc substr$@,0,3;
[reply]
[d/l]

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