problem: services.exe crash on reboot

[Guest Mycroft Holmes]

Hi,

 

sorry for cross-post, but it seemed appropriate.

I'm trying to describe a problem for which I'm not totally familiar, so I

admit my message could be slightly imprecise in terminology.

 

we have a large c++ projects that compiles a windows service (and its

dll's), that runs on some big 8-way opteron servers.

On each server there's a single executable for the service, but it's been

registered twice i.e. there are entries in the registry SERVICE_A and

SERVICE_B that refer to the same exe, with different configurations.

 

The servers reboot once a day and sometimes on reboot, services.exe crashes,

leaving the whole machine in a zombied state.

1) this does never occur if SERVICE_B is removed

2) this seems to occur ONLY on reboot: we stress-tested the servers using

multiple simultaneous "net stop/net start", and all is fine.

 

we assumed that, even by mistake it should be almost impossible to crash

services.exe. does anybody have hints?

thanks in advance,

MH

[Guest Ismo Salonen]

Re: problem: services.exe crash on reboot

 

Mycroft Holmes wrote:

> Hi,

>

> sorry for cross-post, but it seemed appropriate.

> I'm trying to describe a problem for which I'm not totally familiar, so I

> admit my message could be slightly imprecise in terminology.

>

> we have a large c++ projects that compiles a windows service (and its

> dll's), that runs on some big 8-way opteron servers.

> On each server there's a single executable for the service, but it's been

> registered twice i.e. there are entries in the registry SERVICE_A and

> SERVICE_B that refer to the same exe, with different configurations.

>

> The servers reboot once a day and sometimes on reboot, services.exe crashes,

> leaving the whole machine in a zombied state.

> 1) this does never occur if SERVICE_B is removed

> 2) this seems to occur ONLY on reboot: we stress-tested the servers using

> multiple simultaneous "net stop/net start", and all is fine.

>

> we assumed that, even by mistake it should be almost impossible to crash

> services.exe. does anybody have hints?

> thanks in advance,

> MH

>

>

 

One remote possibility is that your service depends on some other

service but the "dependencies tab" does not list those. Then the service

tries to access a dcom object in another service (which is not yet

initialized) and it is started simultaneously by rpc-server ( cant

remember the real names , sorry).

 

Does this error happen if you disable all but cpu on the server ?

If it happens then is it as frequent ?

 

ismo

[Guest Mycroft Holmes]

Re: problem: services.exe crash on reboot

 

> One remote possibility is that your service depends on some other service

> but the "dependencies tab" does not list those. Then the service tries to

> access a dcom object in another service (which is not yet initialized) and

> it is started simultaneously by rpc-server ( cant remember the real names

> , sorry).

>

> Does this error happen if you disable all but cpu on the server ?

> If it happens then is it as frequent ?

>

 

no, we don't have dependencies on other services. we use msxml but no DCOM

the error never occurs in "smaller" servers, only on 8-way.

[Guest Ismo Salonen]

Re: problem: services.exe crash on reboot

 

Mycroft Holmes wrote:

>> One remote possibility is that your service depends on some other service

>> but the "dependencies tab" does not list those. Then the service tries to

>> access a dcom object in another service (which is not yet initialized) and

>> it is started simultaneously by rpc-server ( cant remember the real names

>> , sorry).

>>

>> Does this error happen if you disable all but cpu on the server ?

>> If it happens then is it as frequent ?

>>

>

> no, we don't have dependencies on other services. we use msxml but no DCOM

> the error never occurs in "smaller" servers, only on 8-way.

>

>

>

 

MSXML uses COM, I don't know what it does require from

com-infrastructure. Could you add a dependency for your service, it

could depend e.g rpc or something similar (just for testing) . This is

just for delaying its startup. The 8 cpus has enough horsepower to start

simultaneously many things, it might start your service too early. This

is just a quess.

 

ismo