Reconfigure an existing windows service

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

Fellow Disciples,

Win32::Service lets you start, stop and otherwise control an existing Windows service, but it doesn't let you reconfigure it (e.g. change the account that the service runs under). Win32::Daemon::Simple let's your Perl script be a windows service which can reconfigure itself.

I have a C++ program that is installed as a service and I need to reconfigure it -- specifically, I need to change the account the service runs under; it would be handy to be able to control whether the service is 'automatic' or 'manual', but that is a secondary concern. Does anyone know of a way to do that from inside a Perl script?

Update: I just found the 'sc' command line tool (for XP, don't know about other Windows OS's) that lets you do this. So this can be done in a perl script using system calls to 'sc'. I still wonder if there's a more Perlish way to accomplish this.

--DrWhy

"If God had meant for us to think for ourselves he would have given us brains. Oh, wait..."

Comment on Reconfigure an existing windows service

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Re: Reconfigure an existing windows service
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 07, 2005 at 21:07 UTC

To change a service configuration you need ChangeServiceConfig() or ChangeServiceConfig2().

Look at the lpServiceStartName parameter to set the user account and dwStartType for auto/manual etc.

There shouldn't be too much problem with accessing this via Win32::API.

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Re: Reconfigure an existing windows service
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Sep 07, 2005 at 21:13 UTC

http://search.cpan.org/src/JENDA/Win32-Daemon-Simple-0.2.6/Simple.pm

# parameters
use Win32::Registry;

if ($Win32::Registry::VERSION < 0.08 and !defined($Win32::Registry2::V
+ERSION)) {
    die "Please update your Win32::Registry to 0.08 or newer or instal
+l the patch from http://jenda.krynicky.cz/#Win32::Registry2\n\n";
}

my $ServiceKey;
{
    my $paramkey;
    sub ReadParam {
        my ( $param, $default) = @_;
        $ServiceKey = $HKLM->Open('SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\\
+'.$svcid)
            unless $ServiceKey;
        return $default unless $ServiceKey;
        $paramkey = $ServiceKey->Create('Parameters')
            unless $paramkey;
        my $value = $paramkey->GetValue($param);
        $value = $default unless defined $value;
        return $value;
    }

    sub SaveParam {
        my ( $param, $value) = @_;
        $ServiceKey = $HKLM->Open('SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\\
+'.$svcid)
            unless $ServiceKey;
        return unless $ServiceKey; # do not save anything if the servi
+ce is not installed
        $paramkey = $ServiceKey->Create('Parameters')
            unless $paramkey;
        die "Can't open/create the Parameters subkey in the service se
+ttings!\n" unless $paramkey; # do not save anything if the service is
+ not installed
        if (!defined $value) {
            $paramkey->DeleteValue($param);
        } elsif ($value =~ /^\d+$/) {
            $paramkey->SetValues($param, REG_DWORD, $value);
        } else{
            $value =~ s/\r?\n/\r\n/g;
            $paramkey->SetValues($param, REG_SZ, $value);
        }
    }
}
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