How do you install a service on MSW?

[Benjamin Niemann]

"Real" Windows services have to provide certain functions. But there is 
a tool called SrvAny.exe that can run any program as a service. It's 
part of the Microsoft Resource Kit. Not really easy to use (I tried to 
use it once, but failed...). Ask Google or MSDN.


> This is not strictly a Python question, but I hope it is not too far
> off topic.
> 
> The question is 'How do you install a service on MSW?' Here is the
> background.
> 
> The accounting application I am writing is multi-user. To handle
> logins, record locking, etc, I have written a simple socket server
> program to keep track of various activities, which must run in the
> background all the time. It is written in Python and uses
> socket.socket(). It works well.
> 
> I need it to work on both Linux and MSW. Up to now I have opened a
> separate terminal window, and run it from there. This works fine on
> both platforms. Now I want it to run as a true background service.
> 
> I have figured out how to do this in Linux. On MSW I naively expected
> to be able to go to Control Panel > Adminstrative Tools > Services,
> right click, and find an option to add a new service. No such luck.
> Can anybody please explain how I might be able to do this, or at least
> tell me where I can read up on it.
> 
> I am using Python 2.3.3 with Win32 extensions on Windows 2000 Pro.