[windows-services] When creating a service with sc.exe how to pass in context parameters?

When creating Windows service using:

sc create ServiceName binPath= "the path"

how can arguments be passed to the Installer class's Context.Parameters collection?

My reading of the sc.exe documentation is that such arguments could only be passed on the end of binPath, but I have not found an example or been able to successfully do this.

I had issues getting this to work on Windows 7. It seemed to ignore the first argument I passed in so I used binPath= "C:\path\to\service.exe -bogusarg -realarg1 -realarg2" and it worked.

A service creation example of using backslashes with many double quotes.

C:\Windows\system32>sc.exe create teagent binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\Tripwire\TE\Agent\bin\wrapper.exe\" -s \"C:\Program Files\Tripwire\TE\Agent\bin\agent.conf\"" DisplayName= "Tripwire Enterprise Agent"

[SC] CreateService SUCCESS

It also important taking in account how you access the Arguments in the code of the application.

In my c# application I used the ServiceBase class:

 class MyService : ServiceBase
{

    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
    {
       }
 }

I registered my service using

sc create myService binpath= "MeyService.exe arg1 arg2"

But I couldn't access the arguments through the args variable when I run it as a service.

The MSDN documentation suggests not using the Main method to retrieve the binPath or ImagePath arguments. Instead it suggests placing your logic in the OnStart method and then using (C#) Environment.GetCommandLineArgs();.

To access the first arguments arg1 I need to do like this:

class MyService : ServiceBase
 {

    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
    {

                log.Info("arg1 == "+Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()[1]);

       }
 }

this would print

       arg1 == arg1

If you tried all of the above and still can't pass args to your service, if your service was written in C/C++, here's what could be the problem: when you start your service through "sc start arg1 arg2...", SC calls your service's ServiceMain function directly with those args. But when Windows start your service (at boot time, for example), it's your service's main function (_tmain) that's called, with params from the registry's "binPath".

Parameters for created services have some peculiar formating issues, in particular if the command includes spaces or quotes:

If you want to enter command line parameters for the service, you have to enclose the whole command line in quotes. (And always leave a space after binPath= and before the first quote, as mrswadge pointed out)

So, to create a service for the command PATH\COMMAND.EXE --param1=xyz you would use the following binPath parameter:

binPath= "PATH\COMMAND.EXE --param1=xyz"
        ^^                             ^
        ||                             |
  space    quote                     quote

If the path to the executable contains spaces, you have to enclose the path in quotes.

So for a command that has both parameters and a path with spaces, you need nested quotes. You have to escape the inner quotes with backslashes \". The same holds if the parameters themselves contain quotes, you will need to escape those too.

Despite using backslashes as escape characters, you do not have to escape the regular backslashes contained in the path. This is contrary to how you normally use backslashes as escape characters.

So for a command like
"PATH WITH SPACES \COMMAND.EXE" --param-with-quotes="a b c" --param2:

binPath= "\"PATH WITH SPACES \COMMAND.EXE\" --param-with-quotes=\"a b c\" --param2"
         ^ ^                 ^           ^                      ^       ^         ^
         | |                 |           |                      |       |         | 
 opening     escaped      regular     escaped                    escaped       closing
   quote     quote       backslash    closing                    quotes          quote
     for     for            in         quote                      for              for
   whole     path          path       for path                  parameter        whole
 command                                                                       command

Here is a concrete example from the SVNserve documentation, which shows all special cases:

sc create svnserve 
   binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe\" --service -r \"C:\my repositories\"  "
   displayname= "Subversion Server" depend= Tcpip start= auto 

_{(linebreaks are added for readability, do not include them)}

This would add a new service with the command line "C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe" --service -r "C:\my repositories".

So in summary

• space after each sc parameter: binpath=_, displayname=_ and depend=_
• each sc parameter that contains spaces must be enclosed in quotes
• all additional quotes inside the binpath are escaped with backslashes: \"
• all backslashes inside the binpath are not escaped

Be sure to have quotes at beginning and end of your binPath value.

I use to just create it without parameters, and then edit the registry HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\[YourService].

This command works:

sc create startSvn binPath= "\"C:\Subversion\bin\svnserve.exe\" --service -r \"C:\SVN_Repository\"" displayname= "MyServer" depend= tcpip start= auto

sc create "YOURSERVICENAME" binpath= "\"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11\MSSQL\Binn\sqlservr.exe\" -sOPTIONALSWITCH" start= auto 

See here: Modifying the "Path to executable" of a windows service

I couldn't handle the issue with your proposals, at the end with the x86 folder it only worked in power shell (windows server 2012) using environment variables:

{sc.exe create svnserve binpath= "${env:programfiles(x86)}/subversion/bin/svnserve.exe --service -r C:/svnrepositories/"   displayname= "Subversion Server" depend= Tcpip start= auto}

I found a way to use sc.

sc config binPath= "\"c:\path with spaces in it\service_executable.exe\" "

In other words, use \ to escape any "'s you want to survive the transit into the registry.

it is not working in the Powershell and should use CMD in my case