Artifactory service not starting on Windows

Question

I'm trying to run Artifactory on Windows Server but the Artifactory service will not start. I'm running Windows Server 2016 Datacenter in a VM in Hyper-V. I have tried Server installs with and without the Windows GUI. Artifactory is installed via Chocolatey:

choco install Artifactory -y

When I try to start the service with PowerShell:

Start-Service Artifactory

I immediately get this error in PowerShell:

Service 'artifactory (Artifactory)' cannot be started due to the following error: Cannot start service Artifactory on computer '.'.

Windows event logs show these two errors in this order:

• A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Artifactory service to connect.
• The Artifactory service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

Again, these errors happen immediately so the timeout error is completely erroneous.

But I am able to manually start the Artifactory process:

C:\Program Files\artifactory\bin\artifactory.bat

Artifactory Logs

commons-daemon.2017-08-10.log

[2017-08-10 10:02:53] [info]  [ 2344] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:53] [info]  [ 2344] Service Artifactory name Artifactory
[2017-08-10 10:02:53] [info]  [ 2344] Service 'Artifactory' installed
[2017-08-10 10:02:53] [info]  [ 2344] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 3420] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 3420] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 3420] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 3420] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 3420] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1468] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1468] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1468] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1468] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1468] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1000] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1000] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1000] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1000] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 1000] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:54] [info]  [ 5016] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 5016] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 5016] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 5016] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 5016] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 4308] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 4308] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 4308] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 4308] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 4308] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 1168] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 1168] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 1168] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 1168] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:55] [info]  [ 1168] Commons Daemon procrun finished

artifactory-services.2017-08-10.log

[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [ 3172] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [ 3172] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [ 3172] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [ 3172] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [ 3172] Commons Daemon procrun finished
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [  540] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.11.0 64-bit) started
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [  540] Updating service...
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [  540] Service 'Artifactory' updated
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [  540] Update service finished.
[2017-08-10 10:02:56] [info]  [  540] Commons Daemon procrun finished

Update

Using procmon I noticed that when I tried to start the 'artifactory' service it was starting 'artifactory-service.exe'. Trying to run that program directly myself resulted in the following error:

The system cannot find the Registry key for service 'artifactory-service' Load configuration failed The system cannot find the file specified. Commons Daemon procrun failed with exit value: 2 (Failed to load configuration) The system cannot find the file specified.

Checking procmon again shows that when I start 'artifactory-service.exe' it is trying to access registry entry 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Apache Software Foundation\Procrun 2.0\artifactory-service' and not finding it. I confirmed with regedit that this registry entry does not exist. I am inclined to think this is part of the reason the service is failing to start.

Answer 1

This seems to be caused by the artifactory-service.exe causing unnusual characters to be used inside the Service definition. After running installService.bat when I inspected the Service the "Path to executable" had

...\artifactory-pro-5.5.1\bin\artifactory-service.exe ೴//RS//Artifactory

Where the unusual character is some strange unicode character such as this: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0cf4/index.htm

This seems to be caused by the artifactory-service.exe which is just an older version of the "Commons Daemon Service Runner" prunsrv.exe v1.0.11.0. I cannot find documentation of this error, so I do not know the underlying cause.

What I did to solve this was get the most recent version of prunsrv.exe v1.0.15.0 from a Tomcat 8 installation (tomcat8.exe) and renaming it artifactory-service.exe and placing it back in the %ARTIFACTORY_HOME%\bin installation folder. This allowed it to install and begin running without issue.

Answer 2

Great! Your procedure is working for me, many thanks. The gremlin is this illegal character that we see on the service full path once installed. I was puzzled because the artifactory service works fine under Windows 10 but refused to work under Windows 2016. Tried to extend the PipeServiceTimeout to no avail.

If not clear to some of you, just need to rename tomcat8.exe from latest tomcat 8.5.23 download to artifactory-service.exe . Inspecting the file property allows to see the original file prunsrv.exe v1.0.11.0 or prunsrv.exe v1.0.15.0.

File Property Snapshot -- click here