I've created a Windows service in C#, installed it on a server and it is running fine.
Now I want to install the same service again, but running from a different working directory, having a different config file etc. Thus, I would like to have two (or more) instances of the same service running simultaneously.
Initially, this isn't possible since the installer will complain that there's already a service with the given name installed.
I can overcome this by changing my code, setting the ServiceBase.ServiceName
property to a new value, then recompiling and running InstallUtil.exe again. However, I would much prefer if I could set the service name at install-time, i.e. ideally I would do something like
InstallUtil.exe /i
/servicename="MyService Instance 2"
MyService.exe
If this isn't achievable (I very much doubt it), I would like to be able to inject the service name when I build the service. I thought it might be possible to use some sort of build event, use a clever msbuild or nant trick or something along those lines, but I haven't got a clue.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
I tried accessing a configuration using
ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(string exePath)
in the installer, but couldn't get it to work.
Instead I decided to use System.Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()
in the installer like this:
string[] commandlineArgs = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs();
string servicename;
string servicedisplayname;
ParseServiceNameSwitches(
commandlineArgs,
out servicename,
out servicedisplayname);
serviceInstaller.ServiceName = servicename;
serviceInstaller.DisplayName = servicedisplayname;
Now I can install my services using
InstallUtil.exe /i
InstallableService.dll
/servicename="myserviceinstance_2"
/servicedisplayname="My Service
Instance 2"
I wrote up a more elaborate explanation here.
You can't pass this in as a command line arg, since InstallUtil doesn't provide the right hooks for that.
However, you can make your service installer read the ServiceName from a config file. If you look at some code for a typical ServiceInstaller, you'll see it's just a matter of having the appropriate DisplayName and ServiceName properties setup at runtime. These could easily be read from a configuration file instead of being hard-coded.
Instead of using Environment.GetCommandLineArgs();
the class Installer
has a property called Context
from which you can access command line arguments passed to InstallUtil structured in a nice StringDictionary
.