Windows Service output

Question

What happens to messages printed to stdout and stderr from a Windows service? I know they're not going anywhere, but do they go down /dev/null? Is it possible that an application will block during such a write ?

Answer 1

The output will effectively go to dev/null, and won't introduce a blocking issue. Now performance on the other-hand will be impacted, as it does take resources to write it out.

Ideally, you would be able to configure where logs end up. A nicely implemented service will allow for:

• Writting logs to one or more of: a file, debug output, console output (when running local instances for testing/debugging), potentially even a database.
• Ability to specify the path to where log files are written.
• Configure how long logs are kept around (the service should be able to purge older logs to prevent HDD leaks)
• Specify how frequently to start a new file (so you don't end up with 18 gigabyte log files).
• Ideally, you also want the ability to configure how much data to log (what level of detail).