Felix service on Windows

[Francesco Furfari <fr...@isti.cnr.it>]

Hi all,
I've quickly tested the building of Felix installers in Windows .
This time I've installed the required software that are not managed by 
the building process.
You have to install the Inno Setp 5 software (www.jrsoftware.org) and 
the QuickStart Pack.
Notice that MVN searches these tools in a not localized directory 
"Program Files" while Inno Setup installation uses
the default locale name ("Programmi" in Italian windows systems). It's 
sufficient move the Inno Setup directory in the right  place.
I tried to see where to modify this reference but I was not able to find 
it quickly :(

Well, after that I've installed the Felix service and it works fine with 
a nice interface and tray icon to configure it :).
Is there any documentation about the Felix service?
I was thinking that allowing the service to interact with desktop 
enabled the use of the shell.
Any hint on how to configure it?

francesco

Re: Felix service on Windows

["Richard S. Hall" <he...@ungoverned.org>]

Francesco Furfari wrote:
> Regarding the search path for the bundle directory, you set 
> "-Dfelix.home=C:\Programmi\felix-0.8.0-SNAPSHOT" among the Java 
> options, is this property used by Felix?

No.

-> richard

Re: Felix service on Windows

[Francesco Furfari <fr...@isti.cnr.it>]

Alex Karasulu wrote:

.....
> Oh boy yeah this needs to change but I do check the path for the
> executable too.  So if it's on the path it will get picked up.
>   
OK, I followed the help message reported by MVN , so we should add this 
information in the message.

>>> I was thinking that allowing the service to interact with desktop
>>> enabled the use of the shell.
>>> Any hint on how to configure it?
>>>       
> Hmmmm no sorry this is not what you think it is for.  This will allow
> the windows service to pop up windows on the desktop or to put something
> into the system tray.   It's a low level Windows aspect that determines
> whether or not the service can create visible objects in the windowing
> system.
>
> Alex
>   

Well, I continued to do some test ....
I thought that the service installation used the default configuration 
for Felix, but  I figured out just now that the installer creates an 
empty "bundle" directory and no "config.properties" file. So Felix 
doesn't use the auto.start property and nothing is started with the 
service instance.

If you use the auto.start property then you can see the usual messages 
in the opened console.
I copied the default configuration we have in felix.main, adding the 
required bundles in the bundle directory.
The problem is that you have to set the full path to the bundles (i.e. 
file:///C:/Programmi/felix-0.8.0-SNAPSHOT/bundle/org.apache.felix.shell-0.8.0-SNAPSHOT.jar 
)
otherwise Felix is not able to cache them) and this may cause problems 
to the installer, a relative path should be better but it doesn't work 
so far.

In order to see the messages on the console you have to clear the 
redirect Stdout property in the logging tab of the Felix service 
properties (launched by Tray Monitor).

Other problems are related to the synchronization  between the Felix 
service property panel  and the actual service.
It seems that the panel is only synchronized at the start up, and 
subsequent changes are not monitored correctly by the panel.
For instance, if you stop the service closing the console window, the 
Tray menu is not updated as well as the buttons in the general tab of 
the property. Anyway the status of the service in the Windows services 
control panel works fine.
The same is true for the property "allow the service to interact with 
the desktop",  its modification, applied on the Tray Monitor property 
panel don't have any effect ... but if you do the same changes on the 
Windows service panel they work.

Regarding the search path for the bundle directory, you set 
"-Dfelix.home=C:\Programmi\felix-0.8.0-SNAPSHOT" among the Java options, 
is this property used by Felix?

regards,
francesco

ps:
a part of these small inconsistencies the services works fine ;-)  

Re: Felix service on Windows

[Alex Karasulu <ao...@bellsouth.net>]

Excuse the late response guys.  More inline ...

Richard S. Hall wrote:

> I think Alex would be the one to answer these questions, since he is
> the one that got this working in the first place. Sounds pretty cool,
> though.
>
> -> richard
>
> Francesco Furfari wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> I've quickly tested the building of Felix installers in Windows .
>> This time I've installed the required software that are not managed
>> by the building process.
>> You have to install the Inno Setp 5 software (www.jrsoftware.org) and
>> the QuickStart Pack.
>
I should note this somewhere.

>> Notice that MVN searches these tools in a not localized directory
>> "Program Files" while Inno Setup installation uses
>> the default locale name ("Programmi" in Italian windows systems).
>> It's sufficient move the Inno Setup directory in the right  place.
>> I tried to see where to modify this reference but I was not able to
>> find it quickly :(
>
Oh boy yeah this needs to change but I do check the path for the
executable too.  So if it's on the path it will get picked up.

>>
>> Well, after that I've installed the Felix service and it works fine
>> with a nice interface and tray icon to configure it :).
>
Cool I love the tray icon thingy too myself.

>>
>> Is there any documentation about the Felix service?
>
The Felix service is really using the jakarta daemon procrun service
manager which tomcat uses as well.  Here's where you can read a bit more
about it:

http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/daemon/procrun.html

>>
>> I was thinking that allowing the service to interact with desktop
>> enabled the use of the shell.
>> Any hint on how to configure it?
>
Hmmmm no sorry this is not what you think it is for.  This will allow
the windows service to pop up windows on the desktop or to put something
into the system tray.   It's a low level Windows aspect that determines
whether or not the service can create visible objects in the windowing
system.

Alex

Re: Felix service on Windows

["Richard S. Hall" <he...@ungoverned.org>]

I think Alex would be the one to answer these questions, since he is the 
one that got this working in the first place. Sounds pretty cool, though.

-> richard

Francesco Furfari wrote:
> Hi all,
> I've quickly tested the building of Felix installers in Windows .
> This time I've installed the required software that are not managed by 
> the building process.
> You have to install the Inno Setp 5 software (www.jrsoftware.org) and 
> the QuickStart Pack.
> Notice that MVN searches these tools in a not localized directory 
> "Program Files" while Inno Setup installation uses
> the default locale name ("Programmi" in Italian windows systems). It's 
> sufficient move the Inno Setup directory in the right  place.
> I tried to see where to modify this reference but I was not able to 
> find it quickly :(
>
> Well, after that I've installed the Felix service and it works fine 
> with a nice interface and tray icon to configure it :).
> Is there any documentation about the Felix service?
> I was thinking that allowing the service to interact with desktop 
> enabled the use of the shell.
> Any hint on how to configure it?
>
> francesco
>
>
>