Service did not start...

[hummus19]

...when i run mediaserver -debug the service will start, but if i try to start it from the services' screen or by actually running the program its a no go. I actually just did a complete reinstall of windows (needed to for a long time) xp because i couldn't get the video fx to work with the 360 and so everything on this system is fresh. any ideas? (ive uninstalled/reinstalled the latest version about 5 times now)

thanks.

[ronenmiz]

Check if the TVersity service was installed successfully or not. Also check firewall issues (although they should be the same for the service and the command line).

[guru1968]

that's exactly happening to my TVersity installation!

manually launching "mediaserver -debug" works without errors, while the service does not!

the TVersity service itself actually is installed (i.e. it shows up under "Computer Management/Services and Applications/Services"), Startup Type set to Automatic.
When I start the service from there, it runs for 1 or 2 seconds and than it stops, displaying the message "the service has stopped for itself (like it is for alarms and timers)" or alike - if you need the exact message, let me know (I have a german windows, so I need to translate that; now I'm at work and cannot do that from here...)!
when I put the "-debug" argument as server start parameters there, it won't work either.

are there any more helpful parameters?
(-verbose, -evenmoreverbose, -logfile=..., ...)

I was thinking to reinstall Windows - but thanks to hummus19 I can skip this (since it does not solve this problem)

cheers,
guru

[ronenmiz]

See announcement forum for instructions to enable logging. Then try starting the service from the GUI (right click on tray icon and select start sharing). Assuming it stops, send us the logs or post them here.

[guru1968]

done that:
[log4j.properties]
log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, R
and
[MediaServer.log4cxx.properties]
log4j.rootLogger=DEBUG, R

this does not produce any output at all!
- MShare.log and TVersityMediaServer.log are still empty...
(0 Bytes in size each)

So, I guess it already stops before even writing to the logfiles!

what should I do - re-install everything from scratch?
(I also have the problem - even w/ the manually started server - that video streaming doesn't work; pictures and music is okay though)

[ronenmiz]

Sounds like it does start when it is not as a service. Getting this to work for video is unrelated to this problem. You probably need WMP11 and ffdshow.
Regarding the inability to start the service, try reinstalling TVersity. Are you maybe on Vista? Did you disable UAC?

[guru1968]

Sounds like it does start when it is not as a service. Getting this to work for video is unrelated to this problem. You probably need WMP11 and ffdshow.

yes it starts via CLI (not as a service); btw: I do have WMP11 and ffdshow...

Regarding the inability to start the service, try reinstalling TVersity. Are you maybe on Vista? Did you disable UAC?

Did that, installed new version 0.9.9.2 from scratch - doesn't help, service still won't start :(
I am not on Vista; Windows XP Prof. SP2 w/ all hotfixes...
what is UAC? how do I enable this?

could it be that TVersity has a problem with localized windows?
- I'm running a german windows and do have a national special character ('ö') in my username...

[ronenmiz]

I do not think it is related to localized Windows. UAC is only relevant for Vista so do not worry about it.
Perhaps the service did not get installed? Can you check the services section under admin tool in the control panel? Is TVersity listed? Perhaps some security suite firewall is preventing it from working as a service? Can you disable these tools (for tetsing only, you should re-enable them later).

[guru1968]

as already said earlier: the service actually is installed, start type set to automatic; when I start it manually from the services tab, it starts and stops all by itself after a few seconds!
the exact message is as follows:
Dienst "TVersityMediaServer" wurde auf "Lokaler Computer" gestartet und dann angehalten. Einige Dienste werden automatisch angehalten, wenn sie sich im Leerlauf befinden, wie z.B. Leistungsprotokoll- und Alarmdienste.
the translation of this german message is something like that:
service "TVersityMediaServer" has been started on "local computer" and than stopped. Some services will automatically be stopped when they are idle, such as performance-protocol and alarm services.

I really don't have a clue how to solve this :(

[edit]
just forgot: I also disabled the firewall (McAfee Security Center), did not help at all...

[ronenmiz]

Can you try again to enable logging (via the correct file this time - we need logging for mediaserver.exe not for mshare.exe), try starting it and post here the logs?

[guru1968]

I did this - when the service is started, there's nothing logged at all...

(the logging itself works: when I actually play a video, there's plenty of information in that logfile - but nothing at all upon startup)

and it's actually the mediaserver logfile I am talking about; the mshare logfile is and stays empty throughout the whole lifetime of the server...

BTW:
when I run the mediaserver.exe from the CLI, it only works with that "-debug" option; when I just type mediaserver.exe and hit enter it terminates instantaneously -- exactly like the service does (unfortunatelly, the -debug option does not work for the service...)


[edit]
when I set the loglevel to DEBUG (mediaserver.exe started from the CLI with the -DEBUG option), there's following output in the TVersityMediaServer.log:

2007-01-04 22:57:18,171 INFO [5184] (MSInit@.\MSInit.c:174) - TVersity Media Server version 0.9.9.2 (c) all rights reserved
2007-01-04 22:57:18,203 DEBUG [5184] (UPNPDevice@.\UPNPDevice.c:99) - Initializing UPnP Sdk with ipaddress = (null) port = 41952
2007-01-04 22:57:18,265 DEBUG [5184] (UPNPDevice@.\UPNPDevice.c:114) - UPnP Initialized,ip address = 192.168.1.6, port = 41952
2007-01-04 22:57:18,265 DEBUG [5184] (UPNPDevice@.\UPNPDevice.c:115) - Setting webserver root directory to be C:\Programme\TVersity\Media Server/web/
2007-01-04 22:57:18,265 DEBUG [5184] (UPNPDevice@.\UPNPDevice.c:144) - Registering the root device with description document url: http://192.168.1.6:41952/description/fetch
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1274) - Enter INFO
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSPlayerMediaInfo@.\MSPlayerMediaInfo.c:893) - Player 192.168.1.6 has a User Agent header 5.1.2600 2/Service Pack 2, UPnP/1.0, TVersity Media Server
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1342) - Enter OPEN /description/fetch
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1425) - Exit OPEN
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1433) - Enter READ 2385
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1493) - Exit READ 2385
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1554) - Enter CLOSE
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [1240] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1592) - Exit CLOSE
2007-01-04 22:57:18,281 DEBUG [5184] (UPNPDevice@.\UPNPDevice.c:155) - Root device successfully registered
2007-01-04 22:57:19,093 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1274) - Enter INFO
2007-01-04 22:57:19,093 DEBUG [5908] (MSPlayerMediaInfo@.\MSPlayerMediaInfo.c:893) - Player 127.0.0.1 has a User Agent header Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
2007-01-04 22:57:19,093 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1342) - Enter OPEN /mediasource/fetchlistupdateid?%5F%5Flzbc%5F%5F=1167947839093&type=fs
2007-01-04 22:57:19,093 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1425) - Exit OPEN
2007-01-04 22:57:19,093 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1433) - Enter READ 50
2007-01-04 22:57:19,093 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1493) - Exit READ 50
2007-01-04 22:57:19,109 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1554) - Enter CLOSE
2007-01-04 22:57:19,109 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1592) - Exit CLOSE
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1274) - Enter INFO
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSPlayerMediaInfo@.\MSPlayerMediaInfo.c:893) - Player 127.0.0.1 has a User Agent header Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1342) - Enter OPEN /mediasource/politefetchlist?%5F%5Flzbc%5F%5F=1167947839109&type=fs
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1425) - Exit OPEN
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1433) - Enter READ 661
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1493) - Exit READ 661
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1554) - Enter CLOSE
2007-01-04 22:57:19,156 DEBUG [5908] (MSWebServerCB@.\MSWebServerCB.c:1592) - Exit CLOSE
2007-01-04 22:57:19,500 DEBUG [5184] (UPNPDevice@.\UPNPDevice.c:170) - Device advertisements sent successfully

...and more of these Enter INFO, Player 127.0.0.1, Enter OPEN, Exit OPEN, Enter Read, Exit READ, Enter Close, Exit CLOSE messages as time goes by (without doing anything, i.e. XBox360 switched off)!

BUT: when I either start the server from the CLI without any option or as a service (via computer management), there is NOT ONE SINGLE LINE in this logfile (even the very first greetings line is missing)!!!

could it be that the logging-feature itself is causing the problems? I mean if the logging could not be started this could explain why there is no messages in the file - this is handled as a fatal exception and thus the service terminated? if not the logging, there must be some other very early initialisation that fails if not even that greetings message was generated before termination....

[ronenmiz]

Starting the server from the CLI without any option is not supposed to work since it expects to be started as a service and not from command line. The "-debug" option means start in command line and do not expect to be started as a service so....
Regarding the service start issues, if it cannot write anything to the logs, it means that something very fundamental is wrong. My guess is that you have the \Windows\System32 directory some DLL that conflicts with TVersity. Services gets started so that \Windows\System32 is their home directory. This is unlike the command line case. Can you check all the DLLs in the TVersity installation path and see if perhaps you have some in SYSTEM32 with the same name? If so try renaming them (just for testing) and see if it helps.
As an FYI, normall this should not be an issue since the service manager is supposed to give the stuff from the TVersity path priority over SYSTEM32 but sometimes it can be so it would not hurt checking.

[guru1968]

I don't believe it's a bad dll issue
- first of all it would display an error in such a case which it does not,
- second: I changed into windows/system32 directory before starting mediaserver -debug (with full path of course); the manually started server has not problems at all with that.

so it must be something else that hinders the service from being started...

I guess this is an beta issue and I'll have to wait for the final release before this works!?

(I never had any problems with 'custom' services an my machine; tversity is the first and only service which refuses; plus: reading through the forum, I am not the only one having trouble with this...)

[ronenmiz]

We have hundred of thousand of users and service start issues seem to be happening for a handful of people. We are not able to reproduce them in the lab and rely on those people to help us find the issue. My guess is that something is wrong with your system settings, but we would still like to make TVersity able to handle that. The trouble is we do not know what is that thing that needs to be handled.
Can you check if any service was disabled? These issues typically happen to people that for security reasons or what not, disable some default services or install some tools that "harden" their system and "ruin" it in the process. Did you do anything like that?

[guru1968]

I would be glad to be of help on this issue...

Only thing that may harden my system is the installed McAfee Security Center; problem only is it can not be disabled that easily and I don't want to uninstall it because of all the online updates that I'd need to download/install again after the fresh installation afterwards...

On the other hand, the McAfee center does pop-up a warning window for every event it thinks to be dangerous - and it was silent during tversity installation...

Could you people maybe create an enormously verbose tversity version just for us handful people with the service problems?
Maybe with a different logging mechanism than this log4j thing?
(e.g. logging via windows events that than can be examined in the event viewer, or just some codes written into a plain file or the windows registry, ...)
I mean just log as many events as possible during initialisation of this service; I am SW developer for myself: when there's no chance for a high level debugger (I'm in the automotive area, bugs that only happen while driving around with the car aren't likely to be found on the lab-system), I'm gonna put e.g. a simple printf() after each second line of code -- that's maybe stupid, but sometimes the only way......