Use WINSW To Setup FRP As Windows Service

About:

WinSW is a utility that allows you to wrap and manage a Windows service for any executable.

frpc is a client for the frp (Fast Reverse Proxy) tool, which enables you to expose local servers to the internet.

Procedure:

To set up frpc as a Windows service using WinSW, follow these steps:

1. Download WinSW

• Download the latest release of WinSW from the releases page. Choose the appropriate executable for your system, either WinSW-x64.exe or WinSW-x86.exe.

1. Rename WinSW executable

• Rename the downloaded WinSW executable to frpc-winsw.exe. This will be the service wrapper for the frpc executable.

1. Create a configuration file

• Create a new XML configuration file named frpc-winsw.xml in the same directory as the frpc-winsw.exe. Add the following content to the file:

<service>
  <id>frpc</id>
  <name>frpc</name>
  <description>frp client service managed by WinSW</description>
  <executable>path\to\frpc.exe</executable>
  <arguments>-c path\to\frpc.ini</arguments>
  <log mode="roll-by-size">
    <sizeThreshold>10485760</sizeThreshold>
    <keepFiles>3</keepFiles>
  </log>
  <onfailure action="restart" />
  <startmode>Automatic</startmode>
</service>

• Replace path\to\frpc.exe with the actual path to your frpc.exe file.
• Replace path\to\frpc.ini with the actual path to your frpc.ini configuration file.

1. Install the service

• Open a command prompt or PowerShell window with administrator privileges. Navigate to the directory containing frpc-winsw.exe and frpc-winsw.xml.
• Run the following command to install the service:

.\frpc-winsw.exe install

Installing service 'frpc (frpc)'...
Service 'frpc (frpc)' was installed successfully.

1. Start the service

• After installing the service, start it by running the following command:

.\frpc-winsw.exe start

Service 'frpc (frpc)' was refreshed successfully.

Starting service 'frpc (frpc)'...
Service 'frpc (frpc)' started successfully.

Also, we can restart a Windows service from the command line (alternative)

 net stop frpc

The frpc service is stopping.
The frpc service was stopped successfully.

net start frpc

The frpc service is starting.
The frpc service was started successfully.

Conclusion:

frpc is set up as a Windows service and will automatically start on system boot. You can manage the service using the Services management console or by using the frpc-winsw.exe commands, such as stop, restart, and uninstall.

Reference:

• WinSW documentation
• frp documentation.