Understanding the Publi PDF Service Installer
The Publi PDF Service Installer (PubliPDFService.exe) is a front-end GUI for the Windows NT Service Control Manager designed especially to install/uninstall the Publi PDF Service (PubliPDF.exe) as a Windows NT service. It simply acts as a Windows NT Service Manager for the Publi PDF Service, and is also able to start and stop the Publi PDF Service.
The Publi PDF Service Installer is provided for deployment reasons and because the Java-based front-end for the native Windows NT Service Control Manager provided by Windows does not update itself when a status change for Windows NT services occur while the SC Manager window is open.
Hence, to avoid mistakes while determining whether or not the Publi PDF Service is started, it's highly recommend to use the Publi PDF Service Installer for this purpose, since changes are reflected immediately in this GUI when the service starts or stops (also when start/stop/restart commands are invoked from the native Windows NT Service Control Manager).
Command Line Interface
Some versions of the Publi PDF installer will install a Windows NT service called Publi PDF Service (PubliPDF.exe), and will also stop and remove this service upon application removal. The Publi PDF installer is in fact using the Publi PDF Service Installer with command line parameters for these tasks.
| Key | Value/Action | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| install | – | Installs the Publi PDF Service, but doesn't start it. The reason is that
a valid configuration file must be present before any attempts are made to
start the service. Otherwise, the service cannot start because it doesn't
know what to do. The service can be started via the standard Windows NET START commands, which easily can be implemented into a deployment script. If you are in doubt how to do this please consult the documentation for the Microsoft Windows Resource Tool Kit (which is version dependent). |
| uninstall | – | Removes the Publi PDF Service. If the service is running this command will try to stop the service before any attempt is made to remove the service. |
These commands are keywords that do not have any associated value. Each keyword represent the action taken and must be prefixed by a slash. Command line parameters for any Publi PDF component are case sensitive though exceptions might occur.
The syntax for proper usage in a deployment script is:
PubliPDFService.exe /install
PubliPDFService.exe /uninstall
When command line parameters are presented to PubliPDFService.exe it will not display it's GUI. The requested command will be executed silently.
Known problems
The Publi PDF Service Installer does not provide any useful return value an install script can use to determine success or failure.
Under certain circumstances the resource loader reads in Danish text into the GUI even though Publi PDF Service Installer detects a non-Danish configuration.
Last revised: 16-01-2009.