Santronics Software, Inc.,
Wildcat! Windows Services Installation

Introduction:

The following files are available to help you setup Wildcat! Windows services:

SetWildcatServices.cmd Edit this file to set installation options
Installservices.cmd Installs the services
RemoveServices.cmd Removes the installed services
RemoveAllServices.cmd Blindly removes all Wildcat! services
StartServices.cmd Starts the services
StopServices.cmd Stops the services
WildcatBackupServices.cmd Example automated backup batch file
psservices.exe Utility to start/stop services
wcRegEdit.exe Utility to edit Wildcat! registry items
wcLoadService.exe Internally used by InstallServices.cmd

Before we start, please note the following:

If you have multiple Wildcat! Servers running on the network, you must do one of three things otherwise the Wildcat! Windows Services will fail to start up properly, generally with a service error 205:

  1. If running the Wildcat! Windows services on the same machine as the Wildcat! Service, then you can enable the option [X] Local RPC Clients Only under WCCONFIG | System Security.

    or

  2. Define the register string PreferredServer in the following registry location:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\software\SSI\\Wildcat
    TYPE: REG_SZ PreferredServer <<<ComputerName

    Use the WcRegEdit utility to easily do this or you an manually edit the registry at the above location. Alternatively, run wconline as a desktop application and it should display a Preferred Server selection box. Click the [X] Save as Preferred Service option and it will be saved in the local machine registry.

    or

  3. Define an system environment string `WildcatServer':

    set wildcatserver=<server_machine_name>

    If you wish to run a Wildcat! client on a different subnet, you can connect to the server by using the WildcatServer string and adding the WildcatServerIP environment string:

    set wildcatserver=<server_machine_name>
    set wildcatserverip=<server_machine_ip_address>

    example:

    set wildcatserver=mainsrv1
    set wildcatserverip=209.123.89.12

Wildcat! Windows Services:

There are two parts to the Wildcat! Services:

  1. The Wildcat! Server Windows Service,
  2. And the Wildcat! Hosting Windows Services which include WCFTP, WCPOP3, WCMODEM, WCTELNET, WCWEB, WCSMTP, WCMAIL and WCNNTPSERVER

The Wildcat! Server Windows service can be installed like so:

WcServer -install

and it can be removed as so:

WcServer -remove

Once the WcServer service is installed, you can start it like so:

net start wildcatserver

Since the Wildcat! hosting services can a Wildcat! Server dependency, you can also start the hosting service first:

net start wconline

and Windows will automatically start the wildcateserver service first before starting the wconline service.

You can use the control panel "services" and set the option to automatically start it upon bootup. The recommendation is to set automatic startup for the hosting applications only.

The Hosting services can be installed two ways:

  1. As a single process, WCONLINE.EXE  for instance, which starts FTP, POP3, MODEMS, TELNET and the HTTP servers as Windows services.
  2. Or you can start separate processes for each one. However, the modems service can not be separated from WCONLINE. In other words, if you want to install separate processes, you can only do so for the TCP/IP services, FTP, HTTP, TELNET, POP3. If you want to have a MODEM service, you must use WCONLINE.

Single Process: WCONLINE Service

To install the Hosting Services, there are two modes of operations here:

  1. WcOnline Service,
  2. Individual Hosting Services for each TCP/IP host server.

The WcOnline Service can be installed like so:

WcOnline -install

and it can be removed as so:

WcOnline -remove

By installing the WcOnline Service, you automatically start the  the following hosting servers under 1 single process:

Once the WcOnline service is installed, you can start it like so:

net start wconline

Please note that WCONLINE will fail to find the server if you have multiple WCSERVERS running on different machines. You must define the PreferredServer in the registry.

Separate Processes: Hosting Services

It is now possible to run the following host as separate Windows Service processes:

To work with the separate Windows services, see the batch file SetWildcatServices.cmd.

Note: The TCP/IP services are dependent on the Wildcat! Server so they will automatically start the server service if not already started.  To avoid this dependency, see the SetWildcatServices.cmd

How To Get Started:

  1. Edit SetWildcatServices.cmd to set the options. Read the info in the batch file. The options in this batch file will allow you to install your services as a Single Process or Separate Processes. Default is single process.
  2. Run installservices.cmd
  3. Make sure it is successful.

    The services are prepared as MANUAL startup at the moment, so if you want to automatically startup at BOOT UP, then edit the Control Panel Services and change the Startup configuration to Automatic.

    If you have it setup for Automatic, you can now REBOOT the machine and the services will start automatically.
  4. For manual start/stop, use the StartServices.cmd and StopServices.cmd batch file.

How to setup a Backup process when using Windows services:

A new batch file called WildcatBackupServices.cmd is a complete working template you can use to automate the following logic:

  1. Wait 30 seconds to allow you a chance to abort the batch file by hitting escape.
  2. Broadcast to all currently connected users to log off immediately, a system maintenance is about to begin.
  3. Wait until all users log off, refusing new connections.
  4. Stopping the Wildcat! Windows services.
  5. Running your backup batch file called "YourBackup.bat" which will perform your backup. You can create this batch file or edit the WildcatBackupServices.cmd file to directly call your Windows backup commands.
  6. Restart the Wildcat! Windows Services.

Frequently Ask Questions about Wildcat! Windows Services:

Q:  I used wcSTART to automate the start logic of WCSERVER and WCONLINE when the machine restarts. If I switch to using Wildcat! Windows services, do I still need wcSTART?

No, wcSTART is specifically designed to start "desktop" applications as opposed to Windows services.

Typically, you prepare Windows services to automatically start when the machines boots up without having to log into the local machine or Windows Windows domain.

In your services control panel applet, you should set the Wildcat! Server Windows service to auto-start and do the same with the WcOnline Windows service. Technically, the wcOnline Windows service has a "dependency" on the Wildcat! Server, which means that when Wconline starts, it will automatically start and wait for the Wildcat! Server Windows service to start up before the wcOnline Windows services starts itself. The same is true with wcSMTP, WCMAIL and wcNNTPServer Windows services.

In general, Windows services are great when you don't need to login into the machine. Hence no desktop is available adding to the security of the system. If your machine will always be logged in as a desktop system, the need for Wildcat! Windows services is reduced.

Q. Before when running WCSERVER and WCONLINE, I use to see a icon on the lower right hand corner tray and I use to see a Wconline Connection Manager showing the modem nodes and other connections. Now with Wildcat! Windows services I don't see any of this. What happen?

Windows Services are generally "windows less", no GUI or Mouse interaction is available. To monitor the status of Wildcat!, you have other methods:

  1. WCNODE will show the servers and nodes giving you more control over the system, like stop/starting, disconnecting users, etc.
  2. You can only use the FINGER command (on Windows) to display server activity. The FINGER server needs to be enabled in WCCONFIG and you need to restart WCSERVER to have it enabled. You can then type finger commands such as:

            finger help@yourdomain.com

    to see the various finger commands you can send to the server.

Q: I wish to setup the Wildcat! server as a Windows service, but I want to run wcOnline as a desktop application. Is this allowed?

Yes, however, the opposite is not allowed. You can have the server as a Windows service and start Wildcat desktop application, like WcOnline. But you can't have WcOnline as a Windows service without also having the server as a Windows service.

Q: When attempting to start the wconline service, we are seeing an error 205. What is happening?

Generally, error 205 occurs when WCONLINE is attempting to find a Wildcat! Server to connect and it finds multiple Wildcat! Servers running on the network. To resolve this, read the note at the top of this document regarding how to restrict RPC communications or specify the preferred server to connect to.