PennMUSH Error 5 on Windows Vista

Myrkr Sun 12 Jul 2009 03:01 AM #0

I've followed everything down to a T, but when I try to run the server, I get the following error:

Unable to talk to the Service Control Manager
** Error 5
** Access is denied

If anyone can help me fix this, I'd be grateful. Very grateful. Thank you in advance.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 12 Jul 2009 04:33 AM #1

It might be trying to install itself as a service, and you might not have permission to do that. You could try upgrading your account (in User access or whatever it is) to be allowed to install services. Or, try running with administrator rights.

Or, run with the /run command-line option, which I think just runs it from the command line, and doesn't install as a service.

Myrkr Sun 12 Jul 2009 04:45 AM #2

The thing is, I'd like to run the server as a service. I've got administrator permissions but I, for some reason, can't run it as a service or anything of the like.

But I want to. Is this just an irreconcilable Vista problem, or is there a way to fix it? Is there maybe a way to run PennMUSH from a website so that I can build it online instead, since I can't seem to set it up on my computer? Or is there hope yet for this hunk-a-junk of a Lokitop?

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 12 Jul 2009 05:31 AM #3

Exactly which PennMUSH did you try? I'll try it myself on Vista. Did you use Cygwin or what?

Myrkr Sun 12 Jul 2009 04:16 PM #4

pennmush-1.8.3p6_win32

I don't know how to use or download Cygwin, so I went with the binaries instead.

Myrkr Sun 12 Jul 2009 04:42 PM #5

Okay, I ran the command prompt as administrator (right click command prompt, select RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR) and now I don't get error 5.

Now I get Error 1067, the process terminated unexpectedly.

I got a step closer, at least!

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 12 Jul 2009 11:28 PM #6

It ran OK for me, apart from problems with the config file. I am an administrator on this PC:


Attempting to start PennMUSH as a service ...
Unable to start service, assuming running console-mode application.
You can save time on the next invocation by specifying: pennmush /run
[07/13 09:22:35] Setting ctype locale to English_Australia.1252
[07/13 09:22:35] Setting time locale to English_Australia.1252
[07/13 09:22:35] No support for message locale.
[07/13 09:22:35] Setting collate locale to English_Australia.1252
[07/13 09:22:35] ERROR: Cannot open configuration file mush.cnf.
Redirecting stderr to
Unable to open . Error output to stderr.
[07/13 09:22:35] CHUNK: chunk subsystem initialized
[07/13 09:22:35] 1.8.3
[07/13 09:22:35] MUSH restarted, PID -1, at Mon Jul 13 09:22:35 2009
[07/13 09:22:35] Successfully copied executable, starting copy.
[07/13 09:22:35] Setting ctype locale to English_Australia.1252
[07/13 09:22:35] Setting time locale to English_Australia.1252
[07/13 09:22:35] No support for message locale.
[07/13 09:22:35] Setting collate locale to English_Australia.1252
[07/13 09:22:35] ERROR: Cannot open configuration file mush.cnf.
Redirecting stderr to
Unable to open . Error output to stderr.
[07/13 09:22:35] CHUNK: chunk subsystem initialized
[07/13 09:22:35] 1.8.3
[07/13 09:22:35] MUSH restarted, PID -1, at Mon Jul 13 09:22:35 2009
[07/13 09:22:35] Creating file: txt\help.txt
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennattr.hlp, 7061 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennchat.hlp, 17726 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: penncmd.hlp, 168486 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: penncode.hlp, 8831 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennconf.hlp, 11745 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennflag.hlp, 30042 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennfunc.hlp, 179782 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennmail.hlp, 13243 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennpueb.hlp, 4095 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: penntop.hlp, 84333 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv174.hlp, 35047 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv175.hlp, 23349 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv176.hlp, 15500 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv177.hlp, 71962 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv180.hlp, 11571 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv181.hlp, 21164 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv182.hlp, 9121 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennv183.hlp, 11652 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennvOLD.hlp, 207501 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35] Copied 19 files, 932211 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35] Creating file: txt\news.txt
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: index.nws, 330 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennmush.nws, 53 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35] Copied 2 files, 383 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35] Creating file: txt\events.txt
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: index.evt, 251 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35]     Copying file: pennmush.evt, 329 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35] Copied 2 files, 580 bytes
[07/13 09:22:35] Creating file: txt\rules.txt
[07/13 09:22:35] **** No files matching: "txt\rul\*.rul" found.
[07/13 09:22:35] Creating file: txt\index.txt
[07/13 09:22:35] **** No files matching: "txt\idx\*.idx" found.
[07/13 09:22:35] File "data/indb" not found.
[07/13 09:22:35] File "data/outdb" not found.
[07/13 09:22:35] File "data/PANIC.db" not found.
[07/13 09:22:35] Couldn't open data/indb! Creating minimal world.
[07/13 09:22:35] Access file access.cnf not found.
[07/13 09:22:35] ERROR: Cannot open configuration file mush.cnf.
Listening on port 4201 using IPv4.
[07/13 09:22:35] 252 file descriptors available.
[07/13 09:22:35] RESTART FINISHED.
[07/13 09:22:36] MEMCHECK dump starts
[07/13 09:22:36] StrNode : 9
[07/13 09:22:36] boolexp.bytecode : 0
[07/13 09:22:36] boolexp.node : 0
[07/13 09:22:36] bvm.asm : 0
[07/13 09:22:36] chunk region cache buffer : 1
[07/13 09:22:36] chunk region list : 1
[07/13 09:22:36] cmd.switch.vector : 83
[07/13 09:22:36] cmd_switch_table : 1
[07/13 09:22:36] fcache_data : 9
[07/13 09:22:36] flag.name : 93
[07/13 09:22:36] flag_bitmask : 320
[07/13 09:22:36] flagspace : 2
[07/13 09:22:36] flagspace.flags : 2
[07/13 09:22:36] flagstring : 0
[07/13 09:22:36] hash.buckets : 9
[07/13 09:22:36] hash.key : 500
[07/13 09:22:36] migration reference array : 1
[07/13 09:22:36] ptab : 5
[07/13 09:22:36] ptab.entry : 497
[07/13 09:22:36] replace_string.buff : 0
[07/13 09:22:36] string : 0
[07/13 09:22:36] switch.name : 1
[07/13 09:22:36] userfn_tab : 1
[07/13 09:22:36] MEMCHECK dump ends
[07/13 09:22:36] CHECKPOINTING: data/outdb.#1#

However I could connect to localhost:4201 and got the initial room shown.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 12 Jul 2009 11:32 PM #7

It seems I wasn't running as a service, and under Vista Home edition, I couldn't see how to configure myself to do that.

However the output above was obtained after unzipping the file from the pennmush.org site, and making no other changes.