Is there a way to disable the stop button in Windows Worker Services (Background Services) in .Net Core?

Question

I’m creating a windows worker service in Visual Studio 2022 with new guidelines from Microsoft to create windows services using .Net Core 5.0 Windows Service using BackgroundService.

I found out that there was no property in the Background class to disable stop button - (CanStop property is missing) after the service is installed, like we do in Native Windows Services built using .Net Framework.

Is there a workaround for this problem or will they add new features in the upcoming release for Background services?

Answer 1

Well if you call UseWindowsService this happens:

public static IHostBuilder UseWindowsService(this IHostBuilder hostBuilder)
{
    return UseWindowsService(hostBuilder, _ => { });
}

...

public static IHostBuilder UseWindowsService(this IHostBuilder hostBuilder, Action<WindowsServiceLifetimeOptions> configure)
{
    if (WindowsServiceHelpers.IsWindowsService())
    {
        // Host.CreateDefaultBuilder uses CurrentDirectory for VS scenarios, but CurrentDirectory for services is c:\Windows\System32.
        hostBuilder.UseContentRoot(AppContext.BaseDirectory);
        hostBuilder.ConfigureLogging((hostingContext, logging) =>
        {
            logging.AddEventLog();
        })
        .ConfigureServices((hostContext, services) =>
        {
            services.AddSingleton<IHostLifetime, WindowsServiceLifetime>();
            services.Configure<EventLogSettings>(settings =>
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(settings.SourceName))
                {
                    settings.SourceName = hostContext.HostingEnvironment.ApplicationName;
                }
            });
            services.Configure(configure);
        });
    }

    return hostBuilder;
}

WindowsServiceLifetime implements ServiceBase which has the property:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.serviceprocess.servicebase.canstop?view=dotnet-plat-ext-6.0

So perhaps you could do something like this:

var host = Host.CreateDefaultBuilder()
    .UseWindowsService()
    .Build();

var windowsServiceLifetime = host.Services.GetService<IHostLifetime>() as WindowsServiceLifetime;

// NOTE .Services.GetService<IHostLifetime>() will return IConsoleLifetime when running under console!
if (windowsServiceLifetime != null)
{
    windowsServiceLifetime.CanStop = false;
}

I'm unsure about this but i did a little investigation and hence this post. I'll remove it if this is not valuable.