Running as a service: a workaround

[Anthony]

As the FAQ says, you can't run Abyss webserver as a service under Windows.

However, there's a simple workaround using the "scheduled taks" function from Windows.

Make a scheduled tasks with abyssws.exe, and then schedule it to run "at system startup". Make sure in the advanced settings that the task doesn't stop after 72 hours (or any other reason), and that it can wake the computer to run this task.

This way, the webserver will behave exactly like a service, requiring no user interaction at all to have it running in the background.

You might even use this workaround to tighten security. In Windows2000 you need to supply a user account for the sheduled task. You might use a different account from your own, and then restricts it's NTFS rights to only the files or directories that are neccessary for running the website.


Anthony.

[aprelium]

Thank you Anthony for that great contribution.
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Support Team
Aprelium - http://www.aprelium.com

[c-gconsulting.com]

You can also use the "sc.exe" utility from the Windows resource kit to create a service for Abyss.

Basic syntax (enter all on one line):
sc create abyssweb binpath= "c:\progra~1\abyss ~1\abyssws.exe"

Make sure to go to the Services control panel and set the service to "automatic" and set the login to a valid username and password for an account that can read the web directories.

This is the "professional" way to do it. :)

[Guest]

Thank you for the contribution.

[Scott]

The tip--to use Task Scheduler as a workaround to running Abyss Web Server as a service--sounds great on the surface, but turned out to warrant a serious caveat.

I tried it on my WinXP system, and found that doing an "End Task" on the Abyss Web Server task made the application end uncleanly somehow, and resulted in a corrupt abyss.conf file. This was 100% reproducible for me. Over and over, I'd restore my abyss.conf file, run Abyss Web Server as a scheduled task, then do an "End Task" on it. And every time, it munged the abyss.conf file. Not good!

Yeah, you could say "Just don't do an 'End Task' on it!", but to me, you shouldn't have to worry about it.