Telegraf.exe does not run on Windows Nano Server

[mikewalker125]

Issue

When trying to run telegraf.exe on Windows Server Nano, it fails with the following error:

2017/05/18 11:23:18 E! The service process could not connect to the service controller.

Steps to reproduce

On nano server, run telegraf.exe:

.\telegraf.exe --config C:\Path\To\conf\settings.conf

Other Info

I've narrowed it down to this line of code that is causing the issue:
https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/cmd/telegraf/telegraf.go#L379

Proposed workaround

For running telegraf directly (without installing as a service) on Windows, it looks like it still goes through all the service-related code. Bypassing the block of code beginning here:
https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/cmd/telegraf/telegraf.go#L345
allows telegraf.exe to run on nano server.

Adding a --no-service flag might allow for cleaner execution when not running as a service. This doesn't solve the long term issue (nano server would not be able to run as a service), but does partially mitigate the issue.

I will submit a PR for the --no-service flag.

[danielnelson]

PR #2754 should handle this.

[psmolkin]

Please add this one-line change so we dont have to do a rebuild every time

[danielnelson]

@psmolkin Can you update the pull request with the suggested changes?

[psmolkin]

@danielnelson PR #2754 looks ready to merge

[danielnelson]

We still need to do this #2754 (comment)

[jamesroyer]

I'm getting that error running it from the command line on windowscoreserver. I downloaded v1.5.2 from InfluxData's website. That version doesn't support the "--no-service" flag.

To debug the problem, I downloaded the code from github and I noticed that there is a flag "--console" which isn't recognized in the version downloaded from InfluxData's website. To debug the code, I recompiled it and added prefixes to the "E!" lines (e.g. log.Println("s.Run() E! " + ...)) - which happens to be the line that prints the error for me.

Once I recompiled it, I'm able to use the "--console" line and voila it works. The new compiled version is v1.6.0~e4ce0578. (to be clear "telegraf --console --config telegraf.conf --test" is the command I ran to get it to work from the command line).

[danielnelson]

Closing since fixed in the upcoming 1.6, workaround is to use the --console flag.