README.txt 7.4 KB

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  1. NSSM: The Non-Sucking Service Manager
  2. Version 2.9, 2011-02-28
  3. NSSM is a service helper program similar to srvany and cygrunsrv. It can
  4. start any application as an NT service and will restart the service if it
  5. fails for any reason.
  6. NSSM also has a graphical service installer and remover.
  7. Full documentation can be found online at
  8. http://nssm.cc/
  9. Since version 2.0, the GUI can be bypassed by entering all appropriate
  10. options on the command line.
  11. Since version 2.1, NSSM can be compiled for x64 platforms.
  12. Thanks Benjamin Mayrargue.
  13. Since version 2.2, NSSM can be configured to take different actions
  14. based on the exit code of the managed application.
  15. Since version 2.3, NSSM logs to the Windows event log more elegantly.
  16. Since version 2.5, NSSM respects environment variables in its parameters.
  17. Since version 2.8, NSSM tries harder to shut down the managed application
  18. gracefully and throttles restart attempts if the application doesn't run
  19. for a minimum amount of time.
  20. Usage
  21. -----
  22. In the usage notes below, arguments to the program may be written in angle
  23. brackets and/or square brackets. <string> means you must insert the
  24. appropriate string and [<string>] means the string is optional. See the
  25. examples below...
  26. Installation using the GUI
  27. --------------------------
  28. To install a service, run
  29. nssm install <servicename>
  30. You will be prompted to enter the full path to the application you wish
  31. to run and any command line options to pass to that application.
  32. Use the system service manager (services.msc) to control advanced service
  33. properties such as startup method and desktop interaction. NSSM may
  34. support these options at a later time...
  35. Installation using the command line
  36. -----------------------------------
  37. To install a service, run
  38. nssm install <servicename> <application> [<options>]
  39. NSSM will then attempt to install a service which runs the named application
  40. with the given options (if you specified any).
  41. Don't forget to enclose paths in "quotes" if they contain spaces!
  42. Managing the service
  43. --------------------
  44. NSSM will launch the application listed in the registry when you send it a
  45. start signal and will terminate it when you send a stop signal. So far, so
  46. much like srvany. But NSSM is the Non-Sucking service manager and can take
  47. action if/when the application dies.
  48. With no configuration from you, NSSM will try to restart itself if it notices
  49. that the application died but you didn't send it a stop signal. NSSM will
  50. keep trying, pausing between each attempt, until the service is successfully
  51. started or you send it a stop signal.
  52. NSSM will pause an increasingly longer time between subsequent restart attempts
  53. if the service fails to start in a timely manner, up to a maximum of four
  54. minutes. This is so it does not consume an excessive amount of CPU time trying
  55. to start a failed application over and over again. If you identify the cause
  56. of the failure and don't want to wait you can use the Windows service console
  57. (where the service will be shown in Paused state) to send a continue signal to
  58. NSSM and it will retry within a few seconds.
  59. By default, NSSM defines "a timely manner" to be within 1500 milliseconds.
  60. You can change the threshold for the service by setting the number of
  61. milliseconds as a REG_DWORD value in the registry at
  62. HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<service>\Parameters\AppThrottle.
  63. NSSM will look in the registry under
  64. HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<service>\Parameters\AppExit for
  65. string (REG_EXPAND_SZ) values corresponding to the exit code of the application.
  66. If the application exited with code 1, for instance, NSSM will look for a
  67. string value under AppExit called "1" or, if it does not find it, will
  68. fall back to the AppExit (Default) value. You can find out the exit code
  69. for the application by consulting the system event log. NSSM will log the
  70. exit code when the application exits.
  71. Based on the data found in the registry, NSSM will take one of three actions:
  72. If the value data is "Restart" NSSM will try to restart the application as
  73. described above. This is its default behaviour.
  74. If the value data is "Ignore" NSSM will not try to restart the application
  75. but will continue running itself. This emulates the (usually undesirable)
  76. behaviour of srvany. The Windows Services console would show the service
  77. as still running even though the application has exited.
  78. If the value data is "Exit" NSSM will exit gracefully. The Windows Services
  79. console would show the service as stopped. If you wish to provide
  80. finer-grained control over service recovery you should use this code and
  81. edit the failure action manually. Please note that Windows versions prior
  82. to Vista will not consider such an exit to be a failure. On older versions
  83. of Windows you should use "Suicide" instead.
  84. If the value data is "Suicide" NSSM will simulate a crash and exit without
  85. informing the service manager. This option should only be used for
  86. pre-Vista systems where you wish to apply a service recovery action. Note
  87. that if the monitored application exits with code 0, NSSM will only honour a
  88. request to suicide if you explicitly configure a registry key for exit code 0.
  89. If only the default action is set to Suicide NSSM will instead exit gracefully.
  90. Removing services using the GUI
  91. -------------------------------
  92. NSSM can also remove services. Run
  93. nssm remove <servicename>
  94. to remove a service. You will prompted for confirmation before the service
  95. is removed. Try not to remove essential system services...
  96. Removing service using the command line
  97. ---------------------------------------
  98. To remove a service without confirmation from the GUI, run
  99. nssm remove <servicename> confirm
  100. Try not to remove essential system services...
  101. Logging
  102. -------
  103. NSSM logs to the Windows event log. It registers itself as an event log source
  104. and uses unique event IDs for each type of message it logs. New versions may
  105. add event types but existing event IDs will never be changed.
  106. Because of the way NSSM registers itself you should be aware that you may not
  107. be able to replace the NSSM binary if you have the event viewer open and that
  108. running multiple instances of NSSM from different locations may be confusing if
  109. they are not all the same version.
  110. Example usage
  111. -------------
  112. To install an Unreal Tournament server:
  113. nssm install UT2004 c:\games\ut2004\system\ucc.exe server
  114. To remove the server:
  115. nssm remove UT2004 confirm
  116. Building NSSM from source
  117. -------------------------
  118. NSSM is known to compile with Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual
  119. Studio 2008.
  120. Credits
  121. -------
  122. Thanks to Bernard Loh for finding a bug with service recovery.
  123. Thanks to Benjamin Mayrargue (www.softlion.com) for adding 64-bit support.
  124. Thanks to Joel Reingold for spotting a command line truncation bug.
  125. Thanks to Arve Knudsen for spotting that child processes of the monitored
  126. application could be left running on service shutdown, and that a missing
  127. registry value for AppDirectory confused NSSM.
  128. Thanks to Peter Wagemans and Laszlo Keresztfalvi for suggesting throttling restarts.
  129. Thanks to Eugene Lifshitz for finding an edge case in CreateProcess() and for
  130. advising how to build messages.mc correctly in paths containing spaces.
  131. Licence
  132. -------
  133. NSSM is public domain. You may unconditionally use it and/or its source code
  134. for any purpose you wish.