FireDaemon Tips & Tricks

What Is Fusion?

FireDaemon Fusion is a lightweight, secure standalone application server that delivers complete web based configuration, management and control of your FireDaemon Pro and Windows builtin services.

Use Fusion if:

1. You require the ability to edit and control every aspect of your FireDaemon or Windows services via your browser
2. You want to deploy a lightweight application server running as a native builtin service in preference to IIS or a .NET webserver under FireDaemon control
3. You don’t wish to install FireDaemon services or only wish to install FireDaemon services on certain machines
4. You have no need for a GUI based client (MFC or .NET)

Register for Beta here:

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If the process of your FireDaemon Service is changing rapidly, it’s probably because it’s crashing, not starting correctly or terminating.

Generally it can be a pain to troubleshoot this kind of problem, but there are a few things you can do to fix it:

1. Check the windows event logs, they usually reveal exactly what’s happening.
2. The local file system permissions might be wrong, see http://forums.firedaemon.com/system-permission-local-drives-t648.html for more information.
3. If the executable is on a mapped drive or UNC path, your path might be in the wrong format, see http://forums.firedaemon.com/do-use-mapped-drives-t38.html for more information.
4. Are you remotely connected via RDP?  Make sure the “Shadow Console” is enabled.  See http://forums.firedaemon.com/accessing-shadow-console-via-t397.html for more information.
5. If all else fails, then enable Debug Logging in the FireDaemon Service, let the service run a few times and then look at the debug log to see what’s happening.  If you don’t understand it, you can send a support ticket and attach the debug log to your ticket.

Often FireDaemon services are run off other local drives eg. E: F: etc. These drives could be a new local disk array, iSCSI targets or SAN LUNs. If you find your app is not launching under FireDaemon control then ensure you have checked that the Security permissions includes SYSTEM / Full Control. You need to check this as when you add a new drive to a machine and format with NTFS this permission is not automatically set. To check this:

1. Go to My Computer and look for the local drive you want to check.
2. Right click on the local drive and select Properties.
3. Click on the Security tab
4. In the list of “Group or user names” look for SYSTEM. If it is not there click Edit
5. A new dialog box will be displayed titled “Permissions for E:”
6. Click Add
7. A new dialog box will be displayed titled “Select Users or Groups”
8. In the “Enter the object names to select” type SYSTEM and click the Check Names button.
9. Click OK
10. Then in “Permssions for E:” dialog check Full Control
11. Then click OK twice.

Your FireDaemon apps should launch correctly.

Normally starting and stopping a service requires administrator privileges, but you can assign a normal user the right to control an individual service. You do this with the subinacl.exe utility included in the Windows Resource Kit. You can also download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en

To give the user “John” the right to start and stop the TestService service, log on as administrator and run the following command:

subinacl /SERVICE “TestService” /GRANT=john=TO

You can also give a user right to control a service through the use of Group Policies:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;288129

If you modify your system clock whilst running FireDaemon in evaluation mode you might encounter this error:

Your system clock appears to have been set back, possibly in an attempt to defeat the security system on this program. Please correct your system clock before trying to run this program again. If your clock is correct, please contact the author of this program for instructions on correcting this error (report code 0,2853,2488).
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When installing PanelDaemon, do you get errors like “The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 2769. The arguments are: WEBCA_EvaluateURLsNoFail”

If so, then it is because you have no websites set up in IIS. First set up a website instance and then try the installation of PanelDaemon again.

If you have further problems, check out the installation guide at http://www.paneldaemon.com/manual/

You can run an executable as a service under FireDaemon even if that executable resides on a network drive.

In order to run an executable off of a network drive the following must occur or be true:

1. The executable must be placed in a directory that is shared out

2. The executable can be normally referenced via mapped drive (eg. L:\path\file.exe) or via UNC path (eg. \\server\share\path\file.exe).

3. Mapped drives or UNC paths can only be used if the service is run as a nominated local or domain user (see next point).

4. If you intend to run the service as a nominated local or domain user then that user has must have permission to access the network resource (ie. share) in question. Further, if you want your application to Interact With The Desktop then you need to ensure that the local or domain user is in the Administrator’s group.

5. If you want to use a mapped drive then you are going to have to setup a Pre-Service Program to complete the mapping.

6. The application working directory can be either a mapped drive or UNC path – however, if a UNC path is used, a trailing slash (\) must be supplied (eg. \\server\share\path\).

See http://forums.firedaemon.com/do-use-mapped-drives-t38.html for more information.

If you’ve ever encountered an error like “Installaware Wizard: Setup database not found” while trying to install FireDaemon or other applications, the reason is because your MSI database might be corrupt.

The MSI database stores information about all installed MSI applications.
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If your Pre-Service or Post-Service executable is dying before it has a chance to run, the problem is that the execution time is too low. By default, it is set to 3000ms (3 Seconds). Try setting it to something higher (you might have to keep increasing until you find the proper time).

If you get errors while installing FireDaemon, it is because you do not have the required runtime installed.

In order for FireDaemon to work properly, you must only have the 32bit version of the runtime installed. The runtime should be automatically downloaded and installed from within the firedaemon installer. If the installer you are using doesn’t include the runtime, you can download the full installer from http://forums.firedaemon.com:8080

Example Errors: