We have written a Windows Service that is planned to be deployed to many or all client windows machines in a company. For technical reasons this service has to be run under the logged in user (i.e. not under LocalSystem or any Service Account).
Furthermore it's a requirement that our software has to be deployed using an installer that requires no user interaction (e.g. silent mode is fully supported).
We now face the problem that we are unable to install our service without having the user to provide it's credentials.
My question now is:
Is it possible somehow either during the installation process or in a start up script of the end user to have a service registered or started up without having to enter the users credentials?
If that is not possible (which I assume): Is it possible to start a process as a regular process and
have it register itself as a service at startup, so it appears in the Services panel?
Any help or idea is appreciated.
Related
I was installing the filebeat application and I noticed that I needed to run powershell as administrator in order to install them. When I checked the service using wmic service get name,startname,status it showed Local System. I'm wondering what this account is as this is neither the user account or the administrator account. Will this always be the case when I install services as administrator? What is the difference if I install it as a normal user and as administrator?
In any case, I've set this service to start automatically when windows start. Would this service start only when the user I used to install it logs in or will it start regardless of which user logs in?
OK, let's unpack that one by one, in no particular order:
Only a user with administrator rights can install a service.
Services that are configured to start automatically are started as soon as Windows is up and running; Windows does not wait until somebody logs in. It makes no difference to the service who the logged-on user is, or whether anybody is logged in at all, unless the service application itself has been explicitly programmed to check.
The program that installs the service decides what account the service uses to run. Windows doesn't care what user account was used to install the service, it doesn't even keep track.
If the program that installs the service wants it to use an ordinary user account, it must know the password for that account. There are various special accounts that a service can run in, these accounts do not require a password. One of these special accounts is Local System.
Local System is the highest-privilege service account in Windows; it has all the same rights as an administrator, and can do things an administrator can't. Local System is also the account that the user-mode part of Windows itself runs in, roughly equivalent to the UNIX root account except that it doesn't have a password.
Additional notes, for completeness:
One alternative to Local System is for the service to run as Local Service or as Network Service, which are non-administrative service accounts. The only difference between the two is that if the computer is joined to an Active Directory domain, the Network Service account has network access to other machines in the domain and the Local Service account does not.
It is also possible to configure a service to run in a special service account that is unique to that particular service. This is mostly useful if you want the service to have access to a particular file or folder, but do not want to give it administrator rights.
Nitpickers corner:
It is I believe technically possible to reconfigure Windows to allow non-administrators to install services, but this is not supported and would be a Very Bad Idea. If you did, though, it would still make no difference who installed the service. Windows doesn't record this information.
I have a desktop application should behave differently depending on if an optional service is running. I was using the service control manager to check if the service was registered, and if so, whether or not it was running. This worked well until I realized that this seems to require the desktop application to run as administrator.
What would be the best way of checking these conditions (registered and running) in my desktop application, without requiring administrative rights?
You do not need admin rights to query the SCM for service information.
Call OpenSCManager() requesting SC_MANAGER_CONNECT access, then call OpenService() requesting SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS access. That will tell you if the service is installed or not. If so, then call QueryServiceStatus() to find out if it is running or not.
As I'm more familiar with the C# side, I'm not sure if there's a formal API for doing this in C++ that doesn't require some form of elevated privileges. That said, a couple of alternatives come to mind.
You could have your service open a server socket and listen on the localhost address (127.0.0.1) on a specific port. When your application starts running, it would connect to this address. If the connection succeeded, your service is running.
Another option would be to have your service create a named, system-level mutex when it starts running and close it when the service closes. Your application could check to see if the mutex exists. If it does, your service is running.
HTH
I have a service that logs in as a specific user. The service works great when the user logs in, but won't start until they do so. Is there some kind of a setting I am missing?
This is running on a Windows 7 Ultimate box.
The user is an administrator of the box and the service is set to automatically start.
No errors are in the application log, and the service runs like a champ once the user logs in (without having them start it).
Does the user have privileges to start Windows Services (the user policy)? You can try using ntrights.exe to make sure that he does. Also, can you start the service from Services.msc when logged in another account?
I think this is a privileges problem. Either the service login information is incorrect or the user cannot start services.
This was a fun one, but I figured it out this morning.
The issue is that the server was a clean Windows 7 Ultimate install. That means the power management functionality was set to default which causes the machine to power down after 30 minutes, hence the service would stop running. Fixed the power management settings to never sleep and running like a champ.
Thanks for the input folks.
Here's what I want to do:
a program that listens in the network for a message, and when that message is received, if the user is not logged in (for example the computer just powered on and windows displays the classic login screen), it automatically logs in a certain user accordingly to the message. the username and password are known and stored safely inside the computer in a configuration for the program i'm talking about.
What I had in mind was a windows service that starts with the computer and also listens to those messages, and if one is received, then it does it's job
but I have no idea of where to start
(basically i'm trying to login a user without having to type the password, which I said is stored and known - need something mostly like the fingerprint software windows 7 comes with, and the ones that you had to install in vista/xp so that fingerprint login would work (fingerprint was only an example) )
There's two methods to pursue depending upon which operating system you're looking to run under.
For Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 you need to create a GINA.DLL. This is a replacement DLL which must follow specific rules which handles the authentication process. In your case your replacement DLL would be known by the service which was listening for your start signal, and it would make a call into the DLL with the username and password as appropriate.
MSDN Magazine article on customizing GINA.DLL
MSDN entry on GINA
For Windows Vista/7 and above you'll need to look into the Credential Provider API.
MSDN Magazine article on Credential Provider API in Vista.
MSDN entry on Credential Provider API
You can use windows auto logon feature to do this.
Create a service which waits for the required data on a network socket. Make sure this service is started after the network service (Tcpip). Modify winlogon service properties (manually) so that it depends on your service. By depends, I mean that winlogon service is started after your service.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\AutoAdminLogon to 1
Once you receive the data on your network socket, set the following registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\DefaultUserName
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\DefaultPassword
Once the registry settings are in place, then the winlogon service can read those values and proceed with the login process.
For more details on setting the registry values refer: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315231
I want clarify a little the suggestion of Vikram.exe.
Of cause the usage of AutoAdminLogon seems native for the problem, but saving of the password in registry as a clear text under HKLM\...\Winlogon\DefaultPassword is not good. Since Windows 2000 it is supported the usage of the secrets DefaultPassword which makes the same effect as the DefaultPassword registry value (see Protecting the Automatic Logon Password for the code example).
Another way to force user login or to do any other actions on the login screen is switching to the Winlogon desktop (full name WinSta0\Winlogon). You can use SwitchDesktop and SetProcessWindowStation to do this (see Window Stations and Desktops). If the service run under System account you will have all rights to do this. Depend on the configuration of your service it could be also needed to use SetTokenInformation with TokenSessionId to change the current session id. After the service process will run on the WinSta0\Winlogon desktop you can use functions like FindWindow and other GUI API to place any information in controls of the window (user name, password and so on) of other process. So you can implement more complex scenarios.
Firstly let me just say im not 100% sure how to fully complete such a application but I have a few tips.
you will need to create a Windows Service that starts during the Pre-Login, you can create a service in C#, An example of creating a C# Service is linked below:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zt39148a(VS.80).aspx
Within your application you would set the property Startup Type to Automatic, This will automatically start your service on boot.
You should know that windows services run under a secure context by account so you will have to get your service to run with privs do do this.
In your Service Properties you can Click Log On and you can
To specify that the service uses the Local Service account, click This account, and then type the following NT AUTHORITY\LocalService.
To specify that the service uses the Network Service account, click This account, and then type the following NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService.
As your trying to do this remotly you will have to look at WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) and you will be able to start/stop and send commands to your service.
Your service then would send a command to the Login Management (Not Sure of the name).
you may also wish to check this WOL class which will switch the computer on remotely as long as it supports Wake On LAN, If this is for a corporate environment then I advise you to check your network cards to make sure they are supported
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/wolclass.aspx
I know of some education software that I use for schools that's called CC4 ( http://www.rm.com/shops/rmshop/story.aspx?cref=PS1026195 ) and we can do exactly what you need within this system, I'm not fully sure of how it works fully but i believe it takes the same principles described above.
I have a Windows service written using Topshelf. I'm trying to configure it to run using a Windows account with restricted privileges rather than using LocalSystem. That's also necessary as I'd like to connect to a database using integrated authentication.
The service works when run as LocalSystem (albeit with a database connection string containing credentials) and running the console application as my limited account (using runas) also works.
However, when I try to start the service the service control manager times out waiting for a response:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
I also get the following in the Application Popup event log:
Application Error : The exception unknown software exception (0xc06d007e) occurred in the application at location 0x77e4bef7.
The first thing that the application does is writes to a log file but it doesn't reach that when I start the service. The logging works if I run via the console.
Any suggestions what I might be missing or what I might try next?
This problem seems to be related to the server (a domain controller) rather than TopShelf. A service built with the .NET service component also exhibits the same behaviour.
The service runs successfully on a different machine (in the same domain).
Unfortunately this doesn't help diagnose the problem but gives me an acceptable workaround.
Check the MSDN article Debugging windows services which describes how you debug windows services.
I've just started seeing this on a few of my services written in .net 2.0. They'll start fine when the server boots, but if I were to restart them throughout the day, they would not start, and give this error message.
They currently ran under a domain account which has admin rights on the box, but for kicks, I switched it to Local System, and the service started normally. I stopped it, changed it back to the domain account (reentering the password), and it started normally again as expected.
Don't know if this counts as a 'fix' so much, but that's what worked for me.