Repeater interactive on Server 2008 R2?

[ich]

I'm not sure where to post this, there's no sub-forum for the Repeater, but I figured that since Chunk uses it and this section is pretty active, I'd post this here.

I'm installing the Repeater on a Server 2008 R2 box for the first time and, although the service automatically starts when it boots up, there is no icon in the tool tray for viewing the log. I've tried setting the service to "allow interaction with the desktop" with no change.

I currently have a batch file in the Startup that kills off the service and launches the executable, but that's a cludge and I'm hoping someone can enlighten me.

[supercoe]

Sorry, I don't have much experience with installing the Windows Repeater as a service. To many problems like this so I've always told people to avoid using it that way.
Maybe someone else can chime in here?

[B]

Can we step back a second? How did you get it running as a service? As far as I know one needs to hack things (using a service making utility) to get it running as a service.

Since the services are running in a different context than the logged in desktop, I wonder whether one would actually need two independent processes running, much as UltraVNC itself was split into to services. But I don't know.

It may not be the answer you want, but a lot of people like running the Linux versions. You can probably get them to run in Cygwin, and definitely in a VM if you choose.

Personally I just run it in application mode and/or use the Startup folder, but that's not suitable for lights out operation.

[supercoe]

IIRC the Repeater executable supports the -install command similar to the UltraVNC Server.

[ich]

Like Supercoe says, -install sets it up as a service.
I ran it as a service on my old Server 2003 box for years but started having trouble with it staying stable a while back. I figured it was just the flaky nature of the box it was running on so, now that I'm finally migrating all my services over to a new server, I was going to put it back to running as a service.
However, it sounds like running as a service is unstable and maybe it wasn't the old server after all. I still have it set to auto-run as a service, but I have a batch file in the startup that stops the service and launches the executable. This way I'm less likely to restart the server and forget to get the executable launched. If the service flakes out, just remoting in to the server and logging in gets it running as an application again.

As far as the Linux version, that might be an option if I had any other reason to learn/maintain a Linux installation.

Thanks for the replies, I guess I'll just leave it as is for now.