Question

I have checked all posts here, but can’t find a solution for me so far.
I did setup a small service that should only watch if my other services I want to monitor runs, and if not, start it again and place a message in the application eventlog.

The service itself works great, well nothing special :), but when I start the service it use around 1.6MB of RAM, and every 10 seconds it grow like 60-70k which is way to much to live with it.
I tried dispose and clear all resources. Tried work with the System.Timers instead of the actual solution, but nothing really works as I want it, memory still grows.

No difference in debug or release version and I am using it on .Net 2, don’t know if it make a difference to you 3,3.5 or 4.

Any hint?!

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.ServiceProcess;
using System.Threading;
using System.Timers;

namespace Watchguard
{
  class WindowsService : ServiceBase
  {

    Thread mWorker;
    AutoResetEvent mStop = new AutoResetEvent(false);

    /// <summary>
    /// Public Constructor for WindowsService.
    /// - Put all of your Initialization code here.
    /// </summary>
    public WindowsService()
    {
        this.ServiceName = "Informer Watchguard";
        this.EventLog.Source = "Informer Watchguard";
        this.EventLog.Log = "Application";

      // These Flags set whether or not to handle that specific
        //  type of event. Set to true if you need it, false otherwise.
        this.CanHandlePowerEvent = false;
        this.CanHandleSessionChangeEvent = false;
        this.CanPauseAndContinue = false;
        this.CanShutdown = false;
        this.CanStop = true;

        if (!EventLog.SourceExists("Informer Watchguard"))
          EventLog.CreateEventSource("Informer Watchguard", "Application");
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The Main Thread: This is where your Service is Run.
    /// </summary>
    static void Main()
    {
        ServiceBase.Run(new WindowsService());
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Dispose of objects that need it here.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="disposing">Whether or not disposing is going on.</param>
    protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        base.Dispose(disposing);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// OnStart: Put startup code here
    ///  - Start threads, get inital data, etc.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="args"></param>
    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
    {

      base.OnStart(args);

      MyLogEvent("Init");

      mWorker = new Thread(WatchServices);
      mWorker.Start();

    }

    /// <summary>
    /// OnStop: Put your stop code here
    /// - Stop threads, set final data, etc.
    /// </summary>
    protected override void OnStop()
    {

      mStop.Set();
      mWorker.Join();

      base.OnStop();

    }

    /// <summary>
    /// OnSessionChange(): To handle a change event from a Terminal Server session.
    ///   Useful if you need to determine when a user logs in remotely or logs off,
    ///   or when someone logs into the console.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="changeDescription"></param>
    protected override void OnSessionChange(SessionChangeDescription changeDescription)
    {
      base.OnSessionChange(changeDescription);
    }

    private void WatchServices()
    {

      string scName = "";

      ServiceController[] scServices;
      scServices = ServiceController.GetServices();

      for (; ; )
      {
        // Run this code once every 10 seconds or stop right away if the service is stopped
        if (mStop.WaitOne(10000)) return;
        // Do work...
        foreach (ServiceController scTemp in scServices)
        {

          scName = scTemp.ServiceName.ToString().ToLower();

          if (scName == "InformerWatchguard") scName = ""; // don't do it for yourself

          if (scName.Length > 8) scName = scName.Substring(0, 8);

          if (scName == "informer")
          {

            ServiceController sc = new ServiceController(scTemp.ServiceName.ToString());

            if (sc.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped)
            {

              sc.Start();
              MyLogEvent("Found service " + scTemp.ServiceName.ToString() + " which has status: " + sc.Status + "\nRestarting Service...");

            }

            sc.Dispose();
            sc = null;

          }
        }
      }

    }

    private static void MyLogEvent(String Message)
    {
      // Create an eEventLog instance and assign its source.
      EventLog myLog = new EventLog();
      myLog.Source = "Informer Watchguard";

      // Write an informational entry to the event log.
      myLog.WriteEntry(Message);
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

Your code may throw an exceptions inside loop, but these exception are not catched. So, change the code as follows to catch exceptions:

if (scName == "informer")
{
    try {
        using(ServiceController sc = new ServiceController(scTemp.ServiceName.ToString())) {
            if (sc.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped)
            {
                sc.Start();
                MyLogEvent("Found service " + scTemp.ServiceName.ToString() + " which has status: " + sc.Status + "\nRestarting Service...");
            }
        }
    } catch {
        // Write debug log here
    }
}

You can remove outer try/catch after investigating, leaving using statement to make sure Dispose called even if exception thrown inside.