FireDaemon Tips & Tricks

If you have a windows box as a server and you want to squeeze as much performance out of it as possible.  There is one very often overlooked tweak (pagefile).

Windows by default uses the pagefile as additional memory when your RAM runs out.  Because it uses the hard drive, it’s a lot slower than your RAM.

Disabling the pagefile will speed up everything on your server. read more »

Games often require you to have a fast computer.  Especially newer games. If you encounter 25 FPS or lower in your games, then something is slowing it and affecting your game performance. You should (if possible) be running a minimum of 30FPS at all times or else it will be difficult to play the game smoothly.

The following steps will help you to increase your game performance:

1) Check your process list before starting your game.  Often anti-virus software and other applications that read or write to the hard drive will slow down your game performance.  Especially applications that defrag it, they really slow it down. read more »

If you need a service to run once per day at a specific time and then exit, you can do so with the following:

1. Create your service as normal
2. Set Settings -> Upon Program Exit -> Disabled (or Report the Termination)
3. Set Scheduling -> Schedule a Restart -> At Specific Time

This will cause FireDaemon to run your app initially to completion. When the app quits FireDaemon doesn’t restart it. At the “Specific Time” the app is run again and the cycle continues.

Tell us what you wish FireDaemon would do. Tell us in your own words, too (don’t try to be all technical and official about it).

This was a question that was recently asked in a support ticket and it is a very good one.  For those of us who are concerned about security, this is very important.

Rest assured though, the service password is not stored in the filesystem. When the service is created is it passed to the Service Control Manager where it is hashed and stored in the SAM.

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)

Get your copy here:

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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