Windows Servicify

The tool is a hybrid application. The usage is as follows:

Setting up and starting a windows service

Lets say we have a powershell script that we want to run continuously in the background.

After obtaining the exe file we copy it to a separate folder. There we run:

WindowsServicify.exe --configure

Then the application will ask us several questions that we need to answer:

Enter the service name you'd like: _
Enter the display name you'd like: _
Enter the service description you'd like: _
Enter the command you'd like to execute: _
Working directory for the command: _

These values will be written into a config.json file in the same folder the exe is in.

After that we have the following commands available:

WindowsServicify.exe --install
WindowsServicify.exe --uninstall
WindowsServicify.exe --testrun

• --install will install the windows service (per default with local system as a user and as disabled, but you know you can change these settings in the service manager once the service is there...)
• --uninstall will remove our service from the services
• --testrun will start the application in console mode. Everything else is the same. This way you can have a look at all the outputs.

Everything else can be configured using the normal Windows mechanisms.

Example Config File

{
  "ServiceName": "TestService",
  "DisplayName": "TestService1",
  "Description": "",
  "Command": "powershell.exe",
  "WorkingDirectory": "Github\\Documentation",
  "Arguments": "-File HelloWorld.ps1"
}

Logging

The application will automatically create log files. It will keep 7 days, older logs will automatically be deleted. Each log file is named by the date yyyy-MM-dd.log. The log files contain all the script output with date/timestamps in front of each line like so:

  - [2023-01-01 10:35:23] Hello world

About the execution

The windows service will, when started,

• execute the named command line in the named working directory.
• It will continously watch it.
• When the process crashes or stops, it will log the crash and automatically restart the process.
• All outputs of the process are written into the log files.