On Windows OS (XP, Srv2003) I'd like to find a RELIABLE way to determine if
a service was started not the first time after the system booted up.
That is, I'd like to determine if the service was restarted, or died and was started later.
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>>For example, something like creating a system-wide object that will saty after
>>the service terminates, but will not persist between system reboots.
Spawn a small process (that does nothing but 'Sleep()') when your service has initialized successfully the 1st time and check for its existance on later occasions. Everything else (mutexes, events) is prone to be cleaned up by the system upon exit of the service.
I guess I could use a named pipe for that.
When the sevice starts the first time after the reboot, the pipe is empty,
so it can recognize that by reading the pipe and receiving EOF.
If it is empty, the service can write a byte into the pipe.
When the service starts the next time, it will read that byte and determine
that this is not the first time it is started.
I don't know though if the written byte will persist after the system reboot.
>>Sorry, I didn't know that named pipes are also delted when the last handle is
>> closed.
That's what I meant by "Everything else (mutexes, events) is prone to be cleaned up by the system upon exit of the service."
Anyway, try killing a service when logged in as an admin. It won't work, unless you manually enable 'SeDebugPrivilege'.
But, another idea - why don't you create a registry key with 'REG_OPTION_VOLATILE'? These will be removed when the system reboots:
REG_OPTION_VOLATILE
This key is volatile; the information is stored in memory and is not preserved when the system is restarted. The RegSaveKey function does not save volatile keys. This flag is ignored if the key already exists
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by: sirbountyPosted on 2007-03-16 at 14:45:30ID: 18738113
Other than checking the event logs?