Wowza Community

Windows 2008 R2 starting Wowza as a service

Good day,

We are trying to install Wowza Media Server 3.1.2 on a Windows 2008 R2.

When we start it, the event viewer said:

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The Wowza Media Server service is marked as an interactive service. However, the system is configured to not allow interactive services. This service may not function properly.

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Is this normal?

And we would like to use JConsole/JMX so we would like to change the service Log On account to a named user. We’ve created an user, add it into Administrators group and grant “Log on as service” to this account, however, it failed to start (Error 5: Access is denied) with the following error in event log:

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The Wowza Media Server service failed to start due to the following error:

Access is denied.

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Does anyone have a suggestion?

Thanks.

I have not seen the “Interactive service” message in the event viewer so I can’t advise on that one.

However, I did get the Error 5: Access is denied message when starting the service with a newly created Administrator user named “Wowza”:

Date & Time: 04/10/2012 06:30:52

Event Class: File System

Operation: IRP_MJ_CREATE

Result: ACCESS DENIED

Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Wowza Media Systems\Wowza Media Server 3.1.2\bin\wrapper.exe

TID: 5684

Duration: 0.0000142

Desired Access: Read Attributes

Disposition: Open

Options: Open Reparse Point

Attributes: n/a

ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete

AllocationSize: n/a

Impersonating: LAPTOP\Wowza

So, it’s a file system permissions issue.

I was able to resolve the error by giving “full control” permissions on the Wowza installation folder to my newly created user. You could alternatively add permissions to the “Administrators” group.

We have seen this recently at least once, not sure why it might happen. The service entry is usually installed by default, but is set to ‘manual’, and thus can be enabled as required. Is that entry not present on your servers?

If not then you can try to manually create the service using the following steps:

browse to where your Wowza install directory is

usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Wowza Media Systems\Wowza Media Server 3.6.2.

Go into the ‘bin’ folder and and double click on

InstallWowzaMediaServer-Service.bat

This will run the command and should install Wowza as a service, check the services window to

see if the service is now there.

There’s also a command to reverse the previous one:

UninstallWowzaMediaServer-Service.bat

See if that helps.

Richard

Thanks for the update.

Richard

I am trying to install Wowza Server on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit. I installed the latest JRE (7.25 64-bit). When I installed the latest Wowza Server 3.6.2, the Wowza Server was not listed in the Windows Services. Then I uninstalled it and installed the old version 3.1.2. After that I got the Wowza Server listed in Windows Services. Both installations were completely automatic. The only setting I could modify is the location, where to install the Wowza Server.

So, I had to upgrade the old version to the new one to keep the Wowza Server listed as Windows Services.

Please advise what I am doing wrong.

Thank you, Richard.

Actually, I already upgraded the old version to the new one and everything works fine. I will try your .bat file next time when I install a new server.

We have seen this recently at least once, not sure why it might happen. The service entry is usually installed by default, but is set to ‘manual’, and thus can be enabled as required. Is that entry not present on your servers?

If not then you can try to manually create the service using the following steps:

browse to where your Wowza install directory is

usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Wowza Media Systems\Wowza Media Server 3.6.2.

Go into the ‘bin’ folder and and double click on

InstallWowzaMediaServer-Service.bat

This will run the command and should install Wowza as a service, check the services window to

see if the service is now there.

There’s also a command to reverse the previous one:

UninstallWowzaMediaServer-Service.bat

See if that helps.

Richard

Thanks.

You are right. It is file access rights problem.

The Wowza [install-dir] does not have inheritable permissions. It only allow SYSTEM and Administrator account for Full control. So even if I added the new account into the Administrators group, the service still cannot be started.

Once I grant Full control of Wowza [install-dir] to the account, the service can be started and the is no “Interactive service” message any more as there is no such option if we choose to start services not using Local System account.

Thanks.