[stunnel-users] Stunnel as windows service doesn't start on restart.

Mon Sep 22 20:30:55 CEST 2014

Hello,
I can tell my patch was adressing read file error on conf file,
but, unfortunately, not at all "dependencies of stunnel service at start 
up",
which is likely to be the core pb preventing stunnel to start correctly 
at boot time for people on that thread.

Michal added explicit dependencies at startup, that is necessary to 
solve that bug. I did not check yet its implementation.

But maybe some services, although started, are still "not ready" when 
stunnel starts, so that this makes stunnel fail.

I suggest that stunnel checks, not only the availability, but also the 
"efficiency" of the DNS service by trying to resolve a well known server.
it should retry during, eg, 3 seconds, and then stops with some reports 
if failing to resolve the hostname,
either by lack of network, or by lack of answer from the name resolver.
But...it seems that when having problems at startup, it cannot even log 
anything....maybe this is due to the identity of "system user" of 
stunnel at that particular moment: user that may have no right to write 
on the HD.

People should check also the installation location of stunnel : it is 
supposed (and have predefined shortcuts for that) to be installed 
PREFERABLY in "c:\program files\stunnel".
I recommend to use that location.

They also should try to resolve by hand the hostnames they put in their 
stunnel conf file, just to be sure.

On some network or machines, maybe there is a problem with the firewall 
and SOME services tunneled by stunnel on forbidden ports.

On another hand, it sounds strange that just restarting stunnel (in user 
mode or service mode ?) is solving the problem :
this sounds like unavailability of DNS at startup.

I did not investigate that particular problem, but I will perform some 
tests soon with the last 504 (or 505).

Yours sincerely
Pierre

Le 22/09/2014 19:20, 541401 at gmail.com a écrit :
> Using Stunnel on several Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 machines (all such 
> machines are X64 as the OS is only released as X64).
>
> During August of 2014 I reported in this forum the current version of 
> Stunnel would not function as a service under the above OS, even if 
> using a delayed start, it might run but it would not work.  I reverted 
> to using version 4.35, which did work properly.
>
> Pierre DeLagge was kind enough to provide me with a copy of his 
> patched Stunnel 5.02, which I am still using and which is working 
> flawlessly on my production servers.  No delayed start required.
>
> I am wondering if Pierre's 5.02 patch has been incorporated into the 
> most recently released Stunnel, 5.04?  Has anyone been successful in 
> getting the most current version to actually work under the above 
> environment without delaying the start of the service?
>
> Just to add a little color and background to the story, I am using the 
> native WS2008R2SP1 SMTP server on each machine, in conjunction with 
> Stunnel, so as to forward OS event notifications through a gmail account.
>
>
>
> On 09.22.2014 06:54, John Smith wrote:
>> I tried 5.04. on Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Service Pack 1 x64
>>
>>
>> Same issue. Service shows as started, but no log. If I go manual 
>> restart it works.
>>
>> Have to put delayed startup.
>>
>> On 18 September 2014 16:15, John Smith <java.dev.mtl at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:java.dev.mtl at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     For now i'm happy with 5.03 Already in production so I will have
>>     to wait next time! :)
>>
>>     On 17 September 2014 17:10, Michal Trojnara
>>     <Michal.Trojnara at mirt.net <mailto:Michal.Trojnara at mirt.net>> wrote:
>>
>>         -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>         Hash: SHA1
>>
>>         Jose Alf. wrote:
>>         > Regarding stunnel service dependencies, If you read the
>>         5.04 beta
>>         > announcement, the dependency is created automatically now
>>         when you
>>         > install stunnel as a service. Please give it a try. Looks
>>         like it
>>         > works for me.
>>         >
>>         > Thanks to Mike for implementing that.
>>
>>         Thank you for testing it.
>>
>>         Best regards,
>>                 Mike
>>         -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>         Version: GnuPG v1
>>
>>         iEYEARECAAYFAlQZ+NsACgkQ/NU+nXTHMtGdAgCdFUQ6YWXDdE0g4ZNoys3DSR0Q
>>         yLoAnRgo4jKIzb93fzEZcV79eoAQLXMR
>>         =+xFQ
>>         -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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