Q: When is a Windows service not a Windows service?

Ian Raffle  21 October 2011 11:34:27

A: When the Domino service is running under the Domino Java Server Console

OK, that statement isn’t strictly true, but it helps to describe what appears to happen with a problem I encountered recently.

Following a recent server upgrade a customer reported that they had to restart Domino the following morning as it wasn’t running.  I was sure that I set that service to Automatic . Sure enough the service was set to automatic and was reporting as running. Unfortunately, the Domino server wasn’t responding. I restarted the service, and all was fine again. Or rather it was until the next morning where we had the same story. Just to fill in the (important) background detail here: there was a program document on the server scheduled to shut the Domino server down each night to allow an external batch file to run that would make an OS level copy of the data files for backup (this is not the recommended way to perform backups!).  The Domino server log confirmed server shutdown. At the end of the batch file was a NET START command to start off the Domino service again. But……if Windows thinks it’s already running, then it won’t start it. The solution?  Well, you could insert a NET STOP command prior to the NET START to stop the service and start it again immediately. If you can live without the Java console on the server you can edit the registry to remove the “-jc” parameter from the Service. As ever when you need to edit the registry - take a backup of it first.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Lotus Domino Server (ELotusDominoData)
Data : C:\Program Files\Domino\nservice.exe "=C:\Program Files\Domino\notes.ini" "-jc"

Simply remove the “-jc” parameter and Domino will start as a regular Windows service. The program document stops both the Domino server and the Windows service and the customer doesn’t need to manually start the Domino server every morning.