How to Control Program Startup Sequence on Windows

Most UNIX/Linux users know how to let the system run shell scripts in correct 
order on system bootup. It's not well known how to do this on Windows. Windows 
allows you to set "primitive" dependency among different services. But one 
limitation is that OS service dependency check is rarely sufficient for the 
parent service to be fully ready and functional; child service usually needs 
to wait longer. Second, you can't easily change your own script (.bat, .vbs, 
.pl, etc.) into a service. Questions related to Windows service startup 
sequence and dependency often come in like this.

> Is is possible to create automatic startup of 9ias using the Services 
> only (i.e. without starting any components from the command prompt or 
> from the EM website)? 
> If yes, what is the right order of starting the services? 
> I have the Infrastructure and MidTier on the same machine. 
> If what i'm asking can't be done, does anyone have any good ways used 
> to automate the startup of 9ias.

This is a frequently asked question. We know that OID relies on 
iasdb and the midtier startup relies on OID. But iasdb could startup 
too late, due to e.g. earlier unclean shutdown. We need to delay OID 
startup. Metalink Note:158983.1 and Note:216269.1 suggest creating a 
separate service to achieve this goal. I think that's an overkill. Not 
many people are aware of the method Windows starts up services or runs 
programs in specified order on reboot (although the way UNIX achieves 
this is well known). Try this to see if it works for you. 

1. Change OID service startup type from Automatic to Manual. 
2. Create a file start_oidsvc.bat, which contains something like this:

rem Hope a minute is enough for iasdb to recover (if needed); 
sleep 60
set ORACLE_HOME=D:\Oracle\product\10.1.4\oid
set ORACLE_SID=iasdb
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\ldap\bin;%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
oidmon start 
oidctl connect=iasdb server=oidldapd instance=1 start 

where sleep.exe can be found on the Internet, and psexec.exe from 
sysinternals.com. Make sure they're in %PATH%. Note that the above 
commands oidmon and oidctl are run by the system at startup. (If you 
run them interactively as you, prepend with "psexec -s -d" to run as 
Local System so the processes won't exit after you log off. Psexec is 
from sysinternals.com.)

3. Create a shortcut start_oidsvc.lnk under 
C:\windows\system32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Startup pointing to your 
start_oidsvc.bat. 
4. Add the shortcut to the Local Computer Policy startup script folder. 
That is, run command gpedit.msc. Go to Local Computer Policy | Computer 
Configuration | Windows Settings | Scripts (Startup/Shutdown) | Startup. 
Click Show Files button to make sure the shortcut is shown. Click Add to 
add the shortcut to the Scripts window (selecting the shortcut changes 
the filename display to the real target file start_oidsvc.bat). 

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One anomaly. C:\WINDOWS\system32\grouppolicy folder is not created until you
launch gpedit.msc once. C:\WINDOWS\system32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts is not
created until you navigate to Windows Settings inside GPEdit.
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Unfortunately we're not taking advantage of Windows's capability of 
running scripts in order, because once iasdb service is started, it's 
hard to determine when it's fully ready. But feel free to write a 
script to login and select from dual to make sure it's ready, if you 
don't want to rely on sleep 60 in your start_oidsvc.bat. 

To test, create a big transaction in iasdb. Kill the database process 
in task manager (or shutdown abort from another session). Reboot and 
check for "Beginning crash recovery of 1 threads" in alert.log. And 
make sure you see process hierarchy like this
oidservice.exe (3040) 
  oidldapd.exe (2896) 
    oidldapd.exe (892) 
in indented format with `tlist -t' or `pslist -t'. 

Yong Huang