Question

I have a problem with a shelved Topshelf service that doesn’t start when it’s supposed to: even though the shelf folder changes, and Topshelf notices this, the service is not started. No error messages (no log messages at all, actually) are shown, and I really don’t know where to start looking for the problem.

This is what I have:

• I have verified in the logs that Topshelf notices a change in the folder C:\Topshelf.Host\Services\MyService\.

• I have verified that the file names in the Topshelf shelf folder are MyAssembly.dll and MyAssembly.config. MyAssembly and MyService are the same, matching even on case.

• I have the following in my configuration file:

  <configSections>
    <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net" />
    <section name="ShelfConfiguration" type="Topshelf.Shelving.ShelfConfiguration, TopShelf" />
  </configSections>
  
  <ShelfConfiguration Bootstrapper="MyNamespace.MyBootstrapper, MyAssembly" />
  
  ...
  

• I have the following classes in MyAssembly.dll:

  namespace MyNamespace
  {
      public class MyBootstrapper : Bootstrapper<MyService>
      {
          public void InitializeHostedService(IServiceConfigurator<MyService> cfg)
          {
              cfg.HowToBuildService(name => new MyService());
              cfg.WhenStarted(s => s.StartService());
              cfg.WhenStopped(s => s.StopService());
          }
      }
  
  
      public class MyService
      {
          public void StartService()
          { 
              ...
          }
          public void StopService()
          { 
              ...
          }
      }
  }
  

Answer 1

It turns out everything I included in the question was indeed correctly setup, but I had typos in other places of the config file that gave Topshelf trouble when loading my service. When I corrected those, everything worked as expected.

I’m closing the question, as the problem wasn’t really here.