NSSM: The Non-Sucking Service Manager\r
-Version 2.2, 2010-04-04\r
+Version 2.12, 2012-05-07\r
\r
NSSM is a service helper program similar to srvany and cygrunsrv. It can \r
start any application as an NT service and will restart the service if it \r
\r
Full documentation can be found online at\r
\r
- http://iain.cx/src/nssm/\r
+ http://nssm.cc/\r
\r
Since version 2.0, the GUI can be bypassed by entering all appropriate \r
options on the command line.\r
Since version 2.2, NSSM can be configured to take different actions\r
based on the exit code of the managed application.\r
\r
+Since version 2.3, NSSM logs to the Windows event log more elegantly.\r
+\r
+Since version 2.5, NSSM respects environment variables in its parameters.\r
+\r
+Since version 2.8, NSSM tries harder to shut down the managed application\r
+gracefully and throttles restart attempts if the application doesn't run\r
+for a minimum amount of time.\r
+\r
+Since version 2.11, NSSM respects srvany's AppEnvironment parameter.\r
\r
Usage\r
-----\r
\r
With no configuration from you, NSSM will try to restart itself if it notices\r
that the application died but you didn't send it a stop signal. NSSM will\r
-keep trying, pausing 30 seconds between each attempt, until the service is\r
-successfully started or you send it a stop signal.\r
+keep trying, pausing between each attempt, until the service is successfully\r
+started or you send it a stop signal.\r
+\r
+NSSM will pause an increasingly longer time between subsequent restart attempts\r
+if the service fails to start in a timely manner, up to a maximum of four\r
+minutes. This is so it does not consume an excessive amount of CPU time trying\r
+to start a failed application over and over again. If you identify the cause\r
+of the failure and don't want to wait you can use the Windows service console\r
+(where the service will be shown in Paused state) to send a continue signal to\r
+NSSM and it will retry within a few seconds.\r
+\r
+By default, NSSM defines "a timely manner" to be within 1500 milliseconds.\r
+You can change the threshold for the service by setting the number of\r
+milliseconds as a REG_DWORD value in the registry at\r
+HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<service>\Parameters\AppThrottle.\r
\r
NSSM will look in the registry under\r
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<service>\Parameters\AppExit for\r
-string (REG_SZ) values corresponding to the exit code of the application.\r
+string (REG_EXPAND_SZ) values corresponding to the exit code of the application.\r
If the application exited with code 1, for instance, NSSM will look for a\r
string value under AppExit called "1" or, if it does not find it, will\r
fall back to the AppExit (Default) value. You can find out the exit code\r
behaviour of srvany. The Windows Services console would show the service\r
as still running even though the application has exited.\r
\r
-If the value data is "Exit" NSSM will exit. The Windows Services console\r
-would show the service as stopped. If you wish to provide finer-grained\r
-control over service recovery you should use this code and edit the failure\r
-action manually.\r
+If the value data is "Exit" NSSM will exit gracefully. The Windows Services\r
+console would show the service as stopped. If you wish to provide\r
+finer-grained control over service recovery you should use this code and\r
+edit the failure action manually. Please note that Windows versions prior\r
+to Vista will not consider such an exit to be a failure. On older versions\r
+of Windows you should use "Suicide" instead.\r
+\r
+If the value data is "Suicide" NSSM will simulate a crash and exit without\r
+informing the service manager. This option should only be used for\r
+pre-Vista systems where you wish to apply a service recovery action. Note\r
+that if the monitored application exits with code 0, NSSM will only honour a\r
+request to suicide if you explicitly configure a registry key for exit code 0.\r
+If only the default action is set to Suicide NSSM will instead exit gracefully.\r
\r
\r
Removing services using the GUI\r
Try not to remove essential system services...\r
\r
\r
+Logging\r
+-------\r
+NSSM logs to the Windows event log. It registers itself as an event log source\r
+and uses unique event IDs for each type of message it logs. New versions may\r
+add event types but existing event IDs will never be changed.\r
+\r
+Because of the way NSSM registers itself you should be aware that you may not\r
+be able to replace the NSSM binary if you have the event viewer open and that\r
+running multiple instances of NSSM from different locations may be confusing if\r
+they are not all the same version.\r
+\r
+\r
Example usage\r
-------------\r
To install an Unreal Tournament server:\r
NSSM is known to compile with Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual\r
Studio 2008.\r
\r
+NSSM will also compile with Visual Studio 2010 but the resulting executable\r
+will not run on versions of Windows older than XP SP2.\r
+\r
\r
Credits\r
-------\r
+Thanks to Bernard Loh for finding a bug with service recovery.\r
Thanks to Benjamin Mayrargue (www.softlion.com) for adding 64-bit support.\r
+Thanks to Joel Reingold for spotting a command line truncation bug.\r
+Thanks to Arve Knudsen for spotting that child processes of the monitored\r
+application could be left running on service shutdown, and that a missing\r
+registry value for AppDirectory confused NSSM.\r
+Thanks to Peter Wagemans and Laszlo Keresztfalvi for suggesting throttling restarts.\r
+Thanks to Eugene Lifshitz for finding an edge case in CreateProcess() and for\r
+advising how to build messages.mc correctly in paths containing spaces.\r
+Thanks to Rob Sharp for pointing out that NSSM did not respect the\r
+AppEnvironment registry value used by srvany.\r
+Thanks to Szymon Nowak for help with Windows 2000 compatibility.\r
\r
Licence\r
-------\r
git://git.iain.cx/iain / nssm.git / blobdiff