Question

I need to set up a PHP script as a windows service.

I need it to run regardless of which user is logged in, and on system start up – so it sounds like a windows service is best, but am happy to hear other suggestions.

(This script runs continuously, it’s not a “run every 5 mins” thing I could use the Scheduled Task Manager for.)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/251192 covers using the sc.exe program to install your service.

But from what I’ve read, I need to have a wrapper round the PHP script to accept the special commands from the windows service manager. Can anyone help with this?

Answer 1

Maybe the Resource Kit Tools (specifically srvany.exe) can help you here. MSDN: How To Create A User-Defined Service and possibly this hint for 2008 Server should help you setup any executable as a service. (I’ve successfully used this on Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server and on Windows XP Professional [other Resource Kit, though])

You’d create a bat containing php your-script.php, wrap that with srvany.exe and voila, the script is started once the machine loads the services.

srvany.exe should handle those start/stop/restart calls you’d expect a daemon to execute. It would load your executable on start, kill the process on stop, do both on restart. So you don’t have to worry about this part. You might want to check if a register_shutdown_function() can help identify when your service process is killed.

You can even define dependencies to other services (say some database or some such).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\THENAMEOFYOURSERVICE]
"DependOnService"="DEPENDONTHIS"

replace THENAMEOFYOURSERVICE with the name you gave your service and DEPENDONTHIS with the name of the service to depend on (say “Postgres9.0” or something). Save that file to dependency.reg and load it with regedit /s dependency.reg. (Or doubleclick it in explorer…)