Recently I come across Ruby for the first time while installing few cloud-based network monitoring applications on Windows Servers; these are Ruby applications called Ruby “gem”.

After finished installation and configuration – I found I am able to run the Ruby gem without any problem on the command line (very easy – open CMD > go to Ruby bin directory > execute >application_name run). But if I close CMD – the application immediately stop working. I need this application running as Windows Service.

There are couple of ways to make a Ruby windows service –
i. the Ruby way – there are couple of Ruby utilities & gems already available; one of them is called “win32-services”.
ii. the Windows way – by using the OLD “sc.exe” & “SrvAny.exe”; this works OK on Windows 2008 & Windows 2012. This is the easiest one!

I am no Ruby expert – I will describe here how to create Ruby windows service using SC & SrvAny.

Configuration details are following –

i. Get the “SrvAny.exe” and place it in a directory; this can be even inside Ruby directory “C:\Ruby21\mywinservice\srvany.exe”.

ii. Open CMD with admin priv; execute the following sc command to create a windows service –
>sc create MyRubyService binPath= “C:\Ruby21\mywinservice\srvany.exe” DisplayName= “My Ruby Application”

This will create the windows service “MyRubyService” and registry key with the same name. The registry key & entries should look like following–

iii. Open regedit; go to “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MyRubyService”. Create a new key name “Parameters”. Enter the following entries (String value) under “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MyRubyService\Parameters” –

AppDirectory     -this is the Ruby bin directory
Application         -this is the “ruby.exe” file location
AppParameters -this is the ruby gem application “run” command

You might need to stop or disable “Interactive Services Detection” on Windows 2008; by default this is not enabled on Windows 2012.