SCGI on Windows

While developing with Woof!, you can simply directly start Woof! as an SCGI server by directly invoking the Woof! SCGI server script. For example, the following console command in the Woof! root directory c:\myapp

c:\myapp> tclsh lib\woof\webservers\scgi_server.tcl

starts Woof! listening on the default port 9999, or

c:\myapp> tclsh lib\woof\webservers\scgi_server.tcl -port 10000

will start it on a non-default port 10000.

To stop the server, simply hit Ctrl-C.

Running Woof! as a Windows service

To run Woof! in production mode, where the Woof! process must be running independently of anybody being logged in, it must be installed as a Windows service using the scripts\scgi_winservice.tcl script. For example,

c:\myapp> tclsh scripts\scgi_winservice.tcl -service woofscgi install

will install Woof! as a Windows service woofscgi. You can use the standard Windows service control commands, such as net stop and net start to control the service. In addition to the service name, you can also set the port and other parameters. see the scgi_winservice - Woof! Windows Service chapter for details.

Note you have to make sure the service is started by some means before the web server is ready to pass on requests. There are three possible ways to do this.

• Start it manually using the Windows net start command.
• Have it automatically started at system boot time. For this to happen, you need to install the service with the -startup auto option.

  c:\myapp> tclsh scripts\scgi_winservice.tcl -service woofscgi -startup auto install
  

• Have it started on-demand by the web server. This is only possible with IIS and is described in the next section.

Starting Woof! SCGI from IIS

If your web server is Microsoft IIS and you are using the isapi_scgi IIS extension, you can have IIS start the Woof! service "on-demand". Configure the service to start in manual mode as above. Then add the following two lines to the isapi_scgi configuration file.

SCGIServerStartCommand= net start woofscgi
SCGIServerStopCommand= net stop woofscgi

This assumes you have named the Woof! SCGI service as woofscgi.

The first time that IIS receives a request to be sent to Woof!, it will load the isapi_scgi extension. As part of its initialization, the extension will then execute the command specified by the SCGIServerStartCommand variable to start the Woof! SCGI server. Similarly, when IIS is stopped, the isapi_scgi extension will invoke the command specified by the SCGIServerStopCommand variable to stop the Woof! service. For more details, see the isapi_scgi documentation.

Uninstalling the Woof! service

If you no longer wish to run Woof! as a service, you can use the scgi_winservice.tcl script to uninstall it:

c:\myapp> tclsh scripts\scgi_winservice.tcl -service woofscgi uninstall

Setting the Woof! service user account

By default, the Woof! service will run under the Windows LocalSystem account. For security reasons, you may want to change to run under a less privileges account. You can do this through the Log on pane in the property sheet for the service in Windows Service Control Manager. If you do this, make sure the account has access to the resources (file system, databases etc.) used by your Woof! application.

Error logging

Because the Woof! libraries may not be loaded during startup, the Woof! service will log errors to the Windows event log in some cases, particularly during startup.