Self-Installing .NET Windows Service

Is it possible to use this trick to install a Service on a shared server like on WebHost4Life ?

Anyone have a link to this article? It appears to be dead. Thanks!

Sorry - when I moved my blog the old links went dead. You can find the article here [1] now. It’s a wiki, so if there are any errors, you should feel welcome to fix them. :)

[1] http://pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Craig/SelfInstallingService.html

using System;

using System.Collections;

using System.Configuration.Install;

using System.ServiceProcess;

using System.ComponentModel;

[RunInstallerAttribute(true)]

public class MyProjectInstaller: Installer{

private ServiceInstaller serviceInstaller1;

private ServiceInstaller serviceInstaller2;

private ServiceProcessInstaller processInstaller;

public MyProjectInstaller(){

// Instantiate installers for process and services.

processInstaller = new ServiceProcessInstaller();

serviceInstaller1 = new ServiceInstaller();

serviceInstaller2 = new ServiceInstaller();

// The services run under the system account.

processInstaller.Account = ServiceAccount.LocalSystem;

// The services are started manually.

serviceInstaller1.StartType = ServiceStartMode.Manual;

serviceInstaller2.StartType = ServiceStartMode.Manual;

// ServiceName must equal those on ServiceBase derived classes.

serviceInstaller1.ServiceName = “Hello-World Service 1”;

serviceInstaller2.ServiceName = “Hello-World Service 2”;

// Add installers to collection. Order is not important.

Installers.Add(serviceInstaller1);

Installers.Add(serviceInstaller2);

Installers.Add(processInstaller);

}

}

You may contact Craig via his blog: http://pluralsight.com/blogs/craig/

Sorry, I’ve never created a MSI package on myself, so I don’t know the answer.

Pat, that’s the trick of Craig’s solution: to install the service using command line parameters instead of running installutil.

But how do you install the service once complete. With installutil?

It works the same way installutil does. However, I doubt that WebHost4Life allows its customers to install OS services.

for poeple who stumbled on this article and were worrying about the broken hyperlink of Craig’s blog, here’s a working link.

http://sites.google.com/sit…

pretty nice trick though.

Once the self installing code is written, can this project be referenced in a setup project (msi)? Is there any special steps to take for creating the MSI?

CraigBlog’s docs are not quite right for .NET 1.1. I had to do the following:

First, the main checks for args.Length > 1. This should be args.Length > 0.

Next, ti.Context is a property, not a method, so ti.Context(ctx) should be ti.Context = ctx.

Last, it’s not clear how to deal with normal service startup in the sample. I added an else to the if (/install) else if (/uninstall) clause where I put my “I’m running as a service” code.

I ran in to the same isues as Charlie with Framework 1.0. I corrected the problems but still could not get the service to install. I’m going back to installing manually.