After struggling quite some time with my specific issue on printing when running as a service, I have found finally that there is also a specific Microsoft issue to take into account (what is new ?). If the printing is depending on a printer being available then even if you have printers defined on the specific workstation/server, there is a good chance that it will not work because the System account will not have access to these devices. This appears to be a known "feature" hence there is also an article available in the knowledgebase.
For those who have a similar issue, here is the link :
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q184/2/91.ASPKind regards,
Cas
Sent by FoxWeb Support Team on 10/15/2001 04:40:54 PM:
There are two main differences between running FoxWeb as a regular app. and as a service:
1. System services by default run as the SYSTEM account, which only has rights to the local computer. This account does not have rights to access resources on remote servers. You can change the account used by the FoxWeb service, by following the instructions in the FoxWeb documentation (see the Operating the FoxWeb Server topic).
2. System services do not have access to drive mappings. In order to access data on remote file servers, you must use UNC notation (for details see the Operating the FoxWeb Server topic).
3. System services do not have access to user-specific ODBC DSNs. This is not strictly true, but we always recommend that you use system-wide ODBC DSNs.
4. Applications running as system services do not have a presence on the Desktop. Components which rely on Windows Messages (and possibly DDE) for inter-process communication, will not work if one of them is running as a service and the other is not.
None of the above restrictions is usually a problem. In most cases, the issue is related to the first two restrictions, so the remedy is to change the service user and use UNCs.
Sent by Cas Nuy on 10/15/2001 02:16:49 AM:
During testing of the Foxweb software I have found a significant difference when i had the software running as a service.
I use List &Label version 8 to generate PDF's and to store them on the website (within VFP this programs runs without any problem).
I then incoprporated this in my foxweb application and nothing happened anymore, no pdf files and also no error messages. The output of my VFP code seems to vanish into air.
After multiple re-checks of my foxweb and VFP code, deciding that that was ok, I tried various configuration changes. I have found that the only parameter that has any effect on this operation is the "Run as service" parameter. If I run Foxweb as a service, I have no output, if i run it standard the application works smoothly.
Now my issue is clearly that if i have this running on a server, Foxweb will not run if nobody is logged on to that machine, which would not be the case when running as a service !
Is this a bug, any suggestions would be welcome.
Kind regards,
Cas Nuy