Starting a Windows service in a Docker container - docker

Question

I am using Docker for Windows and am trying to convert a Asp.NET MVC 5 to a container. The one remaining roadblock is that I need the ASPNET State server running. I can start up the service through the interactive terminal and it works just fine, but am unable to get the container to start the service automatically. I've tried using CMD, ENTRYPOINT, and RUN, but from what I gather some of these will only execute the command while the image is building, not when the container starts.
My DOCKERFILE is as follows
FROM microsoft/aspnet:4.7.1-windowsservercore-1709
ARG source
WORKDIR /inetpub/wwwroot
COPY ${source:-obj/Docker/publish} .
CMD powershell -Command \
Set-Service aspnet_state automatic; \
Start-Service -name "aspnet_state"; \
EXPOSE 1433

Answer 1

Instead of using CMD, I used RUN to commit the command to the image, and used multiple RUN commands:
# Enable Session State Server
RUN powershell -Command Set-Service aspnet_state -startuptype automatic
RUN powershell -Command Stop-Service aspnet_state
RUN powershell -Command Start-Service aspnet_state
RUN powershell -Command Set-ItemProperty Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aspnet_state\Parameters -Name AllowRemoteConnection -Value 1

Answer 2

You simply need the following code after you have properly installed the service into the image.
ENTRYPOINT ["powershell"]
CMD Start-Service \""MyWindowsServiceName\"";
NOTE: The name of a windows service may be different to its executable name. You need the windows service name here, not the executable name.