How do I check if my executable is running for a service or for a normal program?

Question

I'm developing a win service in using mingw I've been trying for hours I looked for examples on the internet I used ChatGPT and nothing it returned works and the few examples I found had nothing to do with what I wanted

I hope there is some way to do this the idea and before i create the SERVICE_TABLE_ENTRY i can check if my executable was started for a windows service, if yes i create the SERVICE_TABLE_ENTRY if I don't do anything else.

Answer 1

A little late, but this works for me to distinguish between invocation by services.exe or cmd.exe:

   static BOOL AreWeAService()
    {  BOOL  bIsAService = FALSE;
       BYTE  sidService[SECURITY_MAX_SID_SIZE] = { 0 };
       DWORD cbSidSize = SECURITY_MAX_SID_SIZE;
    
       /* Create a SID for the Windows Service Group (S‒1‒5‒6) and check it against ours */
       if (TRUE == ::CreateWellKnownSid(WinServiceSid, nullptr, &sidService, &cbSidSize))
          ::CheckTokenMembership(NULL, &sidService, &bIsAService);
    
       return bIsAService;
    }

It's important to allocate the SID block as SECURITY_MAX_SID_SIZE or the CheckTokenMembership API call will fail with an "Invalid parameter" error.