Question

I have a good old fashioned windows service (inheriting from System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase), to which I added a component (implementing IComponent) by this.components.Add(new MyStuff());
However MyStuff’s Disposable() doesn’t run if I shut down the exe from Task Manager.

Possible suspects:

• Nothing runs on “End Process”. If so, how do I clean up after myself (e.g. kill started processes?)

• For testing purposes I start my service with

  var service = new MyService();
service.Run();
Thread.Wait(Timeout.Infinite);

  instead of ServiceBase.Run(new []{new MyService()}); can that be the problem?

• ServiceBase doesn’t clean up automaticly. If so, what should I do?

Please help!

Additional info: I’m trying to shut down other exes I’ve started from my service using Process.Start(…), so if there’s a way to make them auto-shutdown (child process?) that would be fine too.

Answer 1

My typical way of having children detect the death of a parent:

• During parent startup, generate a nice, long, random name
• Also during startup, obtain a named mutex with this name, and keep that held locked for the lifetime of the parent.
• When starting a child process, pass the long random name as a parameter
• In the children, dedicate a thread that attempts to obtain the same named mutex.
• If the child ever obtains the mutex, the parent process must have died – so the child should exit also

By using a random name for the mutex, you ensure that a new hierarchy can be constructed even whilst the older parent/child hierarchy is in the process of being shut down.