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.
Related
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.
Hopefully a simple one.
If I run powershell on my XP machine and run:
PS> get-childitem \\networkdrive\$share\folder\file.ext
the command successfully completes and returns the information I am looking for.
If I run the same command from team city it error with an Object-Not-Found. (The team city server and agent are running on the same machine that succeeds with the command)
I'm presuming that this is because Windows Services (what the agent is running as) cannot access network drives.
Does anyone have a simple workaround for this?
The problem is not that team city is running as an Windows Service. The problem is that the account used for that service do not have access to the network share.
There are two solutions to the problem:
1) Change the account of the service to an account which have access to the network share.
Open Services-> Find the team city services
Right click-> Properties -> Go to the Log On tab
Put in the name and password of an account with access
2) Grant the currently used account (most likely the Network Service Account) access to the share.
Use the above steps to figure out which account Team City is running under
On the share Grant access to that account
If it is the Network Service or System account, you need to add the Computer as an account instead of a user. So make sure you pick Computer as object type in the Add dialog.
I have problem with creating service that has access to files on network disk.
Service must have admin rights and it will be run by users that don't have admin privileges.
I send path as UNC
and file is seen by service but it return ACCES_DENIED errors when try to open or do anything on Network drive.
When I run my service as server , everything works fine.
I try to find answer but everywhere I can found only partial answers that do not help me at all.
========
I read that standard service logged as SYSTEM can't have access to network.
So i tried to log id as
NetworkService, LocalService
It didn't work. After run it as one of those user my service can't save files on c:
Some kind of admin account.But I didn't manage to success on that.
Actually logged user.
I don't know how to get password for current user.
Still this will not work for user without admin rights.
========
Please tell me what can I do?
There are plenty of Services that use somehow network resources. How do they do that?
You need to configure your service to run as a user which has sufficient rights. In this case you are looking for rights to network shares. Typically that's going to need a domain user with appropriate rights. Normally you'd ask your network manager to create a dedicated user account for the purpose.
You appear to be labouring under some false information as to how services work. You talk about running the service under the account of the logged on user. Remember that services run when there are no users logged on. And remember that there may be multiple logged users at any point in time.
For me, the port was getting blocked through firewall, I had to add a inbound rule and specify the port which i was using in my application. This way firewall did not blocked my port for outgoing connections.
References:
https://www.firehousesoftware.com/webhelp/FH/Content/FHEnterprise/FHEnterpriseInstallationGuide/24_StaticPort.htm
How can I configure Visual Studio remote debugging when:
My developer machine is a member of an AD domain, and my username is "DevelopersName".
The "remote" machine is on the same Ethernet segment, but is not part of the domain.
The "remote" machine must run software under "RemoteUserName".
Most documentation I can find suggests that you need have both machines in the same domain and with identical usernames. That's not possible here.
I could possibly add my username to "remote", but the software still needs to run under "RemoteUserName.
If it helps, I could add 2nd network card to my developer machine and directly connect the "remote" machine.
Using VS2008, but will be moving soon to VS2010.
Thank you.
Sorry, but I've just spent the last 10 hours trying to debug your exact problem. My findings are not good.
You need to get your accounts synced, especially if you are using your remote app to connect to other systems in your SOA environment, ie: Sharepoint, AD.
You can to some extent get remote debugging to work, if you create an account on your local machine with the same name as that of your remote machine (lets do it like this rather rather than working with the domain account).
You then need to make sure the remote service is running under this account, and its a member of the administrators group. And by this I mean hold down control, and right click run as - with the remote debugger, and select the user (not required if remote server is logged in as the required user).
Run the wizard it will open the required ports, use Authentication, because non authentication won't debug managed code. Breakpoints are never met, and there is nothing you can do about this.
On your local dev machine, log off your domain account, and log onto the local account with matching name as the account on server thats running the remote service.
Now you stand a change of remote debugging. If you can't do any of the above, sorry there is no workaround, its entirely dependent on the user account and having the right permissions.
If you don't want to create a local account, try starting our debugger via command prompt using the following command:
runas /user:[user#machinename] /netonly [debugger.exe]
E.g.:
runas /user:john#mypc123 /netonly devenv.exe
I assume it's managed debugging you're talking about (for native debugging there's a remote debugging solution with no authentication). In this case, I would suggest that you use a local user to launch the debugger on your machine. If this local user's name and password match "RemoteUserName"'s name and password, it should work.
(Note that this does not preclude you from using the AD account to log in to your workstation, you just need to set up another account and use runas to launch Visual Studio.)
What is the least set of privileges required that an account needs to be assigned in order to install a service using sc.exe? With account privileges I mean Local Security Settings in Windows Server 2003.
This service needs to be installed as part of a deployment script and is done remotely to said server by issuing something like the following command:
sc \\<server> create <servicename> binPath=<directory\service.exe> start=auto
Installing a service remotely requires no privileges on the target machine except the right to log on. But the account used must have the SC_MANAGER_CREATE_SERVICE access right on the Service Control Manager on the machine. This right is by default only given to members of the Administrators group. So by default the installing account must be an administrator on the target machine.
For systems prior to Windows Server 2003 SP1 (i.e W2K3, XP, W2K, etc.) the SCM security descriptor cannot be altered so this is the end of the story - you must be an administrator to install a service.
For W2K3 SP1 and later, if you do not want to run the script as an administrator then you could modify the security descriptor on the Service Control Manager for the target machine to include an ACE for the account the script runs under with the appropriate right(s). In general though, you would probably be better off re-thinking your deployment process to use an administrative account for service installation.