How I can register an event-log and write an initial message to it when installing a service?

Question

I am following the instructions on:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9k985bc9.aspx - How to create services

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ddhy0byf.aspx - How to: Add Installers to Your Service Application

then I install the service, using an elevated command window and the command installutil.exe -i WindowsService1.exe

This builds, and installs the service and everything perfectly.

However, I would like to add a log to my service, leading me to wanting to create the event log source, and writing an initial message to it in the installer ( as the installer will run with elevated privileges, whereas the actual service might not )

So I add the following to the installer code (projectinstaller.cs)

public ProjectInstaller()
{
    InitializeComponent();

    if (!System.Diagnostics.EventLog.SourceExists("TestService"))
    {
        System.Diagnostics.EventLog.CreateEventSource(
            "TestService Service", "TestService");
    }
    System.Diagnostics.EventLog TestEventLog = new System.Diagnostics.EventLog();
    TestEventLog.Source = "TestService ServiceInstaller";
    TestEventLog.Log = "TestService";

    TestEventLog.WriteEntry("New log created");
}

This still builds, but now installutil.exe -i WindowsService1.exe ( still being run with elevated privileges ) throws the following error:

An exception occurred during the Install phase.
System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to create an instance of the WindowsService1.ProjectInstaller installer type.
The inner exception System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException was thrown with the following error message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation..
The inner exception System.ArgumentException was thrown with the following error message: Log TestService has already been registered as a source on the local computer..

Google has lead me to believe that this is some form of permission error with windows RE creating logs, and has led me to a solution that involves manually writing stuff to the registry. I would however prefer to not muck around in the registry if there is a better way to do it ( e.g. a native c# way to get this to work )

How I can register the log and write an initial message to it when installing the service?

Answer 1

The exception is telling you exactly what the problem is. The last line reads:

The inner exception System.ArgumentException was thrown with the following error message: Log TestService has already been registered as a source on the local computer..

You're trying to create a source that already exists.

See my answer to a similar question for details.