Problem when running Bamboo agent as a Windows service

[Heather Wells]

I have a Bamboo agent on a Windows 7 machine. When I start the agent from the command line, my builds work fine. When I install the agent as a Windows service, the builds hang.

The build in question depends on an executable which is in the system PATH variable. When running Bamboo as a Windows service, it gets to the point where it needs to use that executable and the build hangs. I'm not sure if the agent is unable to find the executable in the PATH or if something else is wrong.

I've tried installing the service both with the local system account and with the same user as I used when running it manually. I get the same result each time.

[Heather Wells · Accepted solution]

It looks like the problem was actually Microsoft Word, which doesn't behave well in an automated environment. Even if the service is run as a user, Word will still run as the Local System account. The workaround is described here:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/innovateonoffice/thread/b81a3c4e-62db-488b-af06-44421818ef91

[Joe Clark]

Ah, that old chestnut. A real pain.

[Kepio]

The work around in the above thread worked for me - in my case, I had to create the following folder to allow excel to run within a bamboo agent session

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop

[Joe Clark]

• Try temporarily configuring your build to use a well-known executable on the system $PATH to see if you can isolate the problem to RHCL.exe (eg. try just running the "echo" command or somehting like that).
  
  
• Does RHCL.exe interact with the Windows desktop at all? If so, you'll need to grant "allow service to interact with desktop" permission to the service.
  
  
• What user account is running the bamboo service? Make sure the user has read and execute permissions on the executable.
  
  
• If the exe requires administrator permissions, try turning off User Access Control on your bamboo agent.

[Przemek Bruski]

Is it any well known executable or an internal one?

[Heather Wells]

It's the command-line tool for RoboHelp (RHCL.exe). This is the only area of our builds that requires a Windows machine to run, so it's the only time I've encountered this problem.