Using OmniServer as a Service

For All Systems

To start OmniServer as a service, bring up the OmniServer Configuration. Then select View | Runtime Options from the OmniServer Menu. The dialog box that appears will look like this: To start OmniServer as a service, simply check the Run the runtime program as a service option in the dialog box above. Then click the OK button to save the settings. The setting Start runtime program at system startup or user login, when OmniServer is configured to run as a service, corresponds to the Startup Mode for the service. When enabled, Startup Mode is "Automatic", meaning the OmniServer service will start when Windows boots. When disabled, Startup Mode is "Manual" meaning the OmniServer service will start when another service or application accesses it. Please note: You will have to shutdown the OmniServer Poller and start the OmniServer service before these settings can take effect. This can be done simply by rebooting the computer. If that is not an option, you can also do it manually. Those steps are: Locate the OmniServer Poller icon in the icon tray. Right-click on the icon and select "Exit" from the menu. If you cannot find the icon, then the poller has already been stopped, and you can proceed to the next step. Open up your Services program. This is normally found by going to the Control Panel and selecting the Administrative Tools menu. You will find the Services icon there. Find OmniServer by Software Toolbox in the list on the right .Right-click on the item and select Start from the pop-up menu. The OmniServer Poller will start up as a service at this point.

For Windows XP. Windows 2003 Server, Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server:

Because of the security concerns built into newer operating systems, simply "turning on" the service switch for OmniServer does not mean OmniServer will start up as a service. Luckily, these security concerns deal mostly with system features being turned off by default (instead of being turned on by default in earlier versions), so the additional steps are simple and quick. Step 1: Setting up OmniServer to run as a Service Follow the directions in the section above titled All Systems to setup OmniServer as a service. After you shutdown the OmniServer Poller, go to the next step. Step 2: Deciding if you need NetDDE If you were to simply turn on the Services flag in OmniServer and try to start it, you will see something like this: You get this error because OmniServer depends upon the NetDDE services on the local computer to be started. By default, these are disabled on your computer. If you do not want to use NetDDE with your OmniServer, then go to View | Runtime Options, and check the "Disable NetDDE dependence". Click OK , restart the OmniServer Poller, and you're done. However, if you want to use NetDDE with OmniServer, then proceed to the following steps. Step 3: Enabling and Starting the NetDDE Services There are actually two services that need to be enabled and started for NetDDE.   To enable and start these services, you will need to go into the Services program in your Administrative Tools (normally found as an icon in your Control Panel). In the list, locate the two items shown above. We will be setting the properties for each one, so for both of the items right-click on the item and select Properties. Please note: Since "Network DDE" depends upon "Network DDE DSDM", enable and start "Network DDE DSDM" first. When you right-click on "Network DDE DSDM", you will get this screen: First, change the Startup type from Disabled to Automatic. Once you do that, the Apply button will become active. Click on Apply, and the Start button will become active. Click on Apply to start the service. Finally, click OK to finish. Next, you will need to do the same thing as above to the Network DDE service. It will follow the same directions as the Network DDE DSDM instructions above. Step 4: Start OmniServer Once you have started the NetDDE DSDM and NetDDE services, you can start OmniServer. To do this, go to the OmniServer by Software Toolbox entry in the Services list, right-click on the entry, and select Start. The OmniServer service will start and make itself available to outside clients.

Configuring DCOM

Finally, if you are still not able to communicate to your server, you may need to change your DCOM settings in order to grant access rights to the server. If you are receiving "Access Denied" errors when the OmniServer Configuration tries to access the runtime, this is because the user you are logged-in as does not have Access Permissions to OmniServer (the OmniServer Configuration authenticates as the logged-in user and the OmniServer runtime service authenticates as the "Local System" account). You will need to add the following user to your Access Permissions in the DCOM configuration for OmniServer: Everyone -or- Any Users that will be logging-in to the PC to use OmniServer More information on DCOM can be found here. DCOM Tutorial