Need a way to check status of Windows service prog

Question

Here is the situation:

I have been called upon to work with InstallAnywhere 8, a Java-based installer IDE, of sorts, that allows starting and stopping of windows services, but has no built-in method to query their states. Fortunately, it allows you to create custom actions in Java which can be called at any time during the installation process (by way of what I consider to be a rather convoluted API).

I just need something that will tell me if a specific service is started or stopped.

The IDE also allows calling batch scripts, so this is an option as well, although once the script is run, there is almost no way to verify that it succeeded, so I'm trying to avoid that.

Any suggestions or criticisms are welcome.

Answer 1

I have been dealing with installers for years and the trick is to create your own EXE and call it on setup. This offers good flexibility like displaying precise error messages in the event an error occurs, and have success-based return values so your installer knows about what happened.

Here's how to start, stop and query states for windows services (C++): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684941(VS.85).aspx (VB and C# offers similar functions)

Answer 2

You can create a small VBS on-th-fly, launch it and capture its return code.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;

public class VBSUtils {
  private VBSUtils() {  }

  public static boolean isServiceRunning(String serviceName) {
    try {
        File file = File.createTempFile("realhowto",".vbs");
        file.deleteOnExit();
        FileWriter fw = new java.io.FileWriter(file);

        String vbs = "Set sh = CreateObject(\"Shell.Application\") \n"
                   + "If sh.IsServiceRunning(\""+ serviceName +"\") Then \n"
                   + "   wscript.Quit(1) \n"
                   + "End If \n"
                   + "wscript.Quit(0) \n";
        fw.write(vbs);
        fw.close();
        Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("wscript " + file.getPath());
        p.waitFor();
        return (p.exitValue() == 1);
    }
    catch(Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return false;
  }


  public static void main(String[] args){
    //
    // DEMO
    //
    String result = "";
    msgBox("Check if service 'Themes' is running (should be yes)");
    result = isServiceRunning("Themes") ? "" : " NOT ";
    msgBox("service 'Themes' is " + result + " running ");

    msgBox("Check if service 'foo' is running (should be no)");
    result = isServiceRunning("foo") ? "" : " NOT ";
    msgBox("service 'foo' is " + result + " running ");
  }

  public static void msgBox(String msg) {
    javax.swing.JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog((java.awt.Component)
       null, msg, "VBSUtils", javax.swing.JOptionPane.DEFAULT_OPTION);
  }
}