StartService() immediately returns with ERROR_SERVICE_REQUEST

I made a windows service, and I install it with:

    SC_HANDLE service = CreateServiceA
    (
        scm,
        "turboledz",
        "TurboLEDz",
        SERVICE_ALL_ACCESS,
        SERVICE_WIN32_OWN_PROCESS,
        SERVICE_AUTO_START,
        SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL,
        servicepath,
        NULL,
        NULL,
        NULL,
        NULL,
        NULL
    );

This succeeds.

I can then query its state, using QueryServiceStatus(service, &servstat); which predicably returns SERVICE_STOPPED.

So far, so good.

When I subsequently start the service, either programmatically using:

    const int started = StartServiceA
    (
        service,
        0,      // num service arguments.
        NULL
    );
    if (started)
    {
        LOGI("turboledz service has been started.");
    }
    else
    {
        const DWORD err = GetLastError();
        LOGI("Failed to start service. Error: 0x%lx", err);
        return 5;
    }

...or by using the sc command line tool:

sc start turboledz

Then I am immediately, (in a fraction of a second) prompted with the error:

[SC] StartService FAILED 1053:

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

Which corresponds to ERROR_SERVICE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT.

Furthermore, since the first thing my service does is create a log file, and this log file is not present, I must conclude that SCM did not even try to launch my service.

The service has a properly set binpath, by the way, so that is not the issue.

This raises so many questions:

How can a TIMEOUT fail in a split second?
How come SCM does not launch the service process?

Note: I have Administrator Privileges when I create and start the service.

Note: It is not an issue of missing service executable, because if I delete that, the sc error changes into ERROR_SERVICE_DOES_NOT_EXIST

UPDATE

The event viewer shows the SCM logs, which contains a flat out lie: 30,000 miliseconds never passed between the start of the service and the timeout error.

The creation, the launch, the time-out, all occurred at 12:52:43.

UPDATE 2

The main() code:

   ...
SERVICE_TABLE_ENTRY servtabl[] =
    {
        {L"turboledz", (LPSERVICE_MAIN_FUNCTION)ServiceMain},
        {NULL, NULL}
    };
    const int startres = StartServiceCtrlDispatcher( servtabl );
    if (!startres)
    {
        const DWORD err = GetLastError();
        if (err == ERROR_FAILED_SERVICE_CONTROLLER_CONNECT)
            LOGI("The program is being run as a console application rather than as a service.");
        LOGI("StartServiceCtrlDispatcher() failed with: 0x%lx", err);
        return 1;
    }
   ...

And ServiceMain:

VOID WINAPI ServiceMain(DWORD argc, LPTSTR* argv)
{
    sshandle = RegisterServiceCtrlHandlerExA
    (
        "turboledz",
        ServiceCtrlHandler,
        (LPVOID)0
    );
    if (sshandle == NULL)
    {
        const DWORD err = GetLastError();
        LOGI("RegisterServiceCtrlHandlerExA() failed with error 0x%lx", err);
        return;
    }
    else
    {
        LOGI("Service Control Handler for TurboLEDz has been registered.");
    }
    ...

But according to my logging, neither of these is ever reached. The service process is simply never started.

CodePudding user response：

So, I found the root-cause: the service process never launched because a DLL dependency was not found. (My MSI installer package had not packed up a DLL that my service process depends on.)

Still, in my opinion, this is a bug in MS Windows 10. The OS claims there was a 30,000 ms time-out. There was no time-out.

The StartService() call should have returned a different error, to indicate that the service process failed to launch.

Maybe ERROR_APP_INIT_FAILURE would be a good error code for this.

As it it now, a failed launch is not properly communicated to the caller, nor to the event log.

I'll see if I can log a bug with Microsoft for this.