.net - how to connect windows service with systray application

Question

I have a windows service that do something periodically. on user account runs systray application (written in C#) that communicate with windows service (thru .net remoting) and shows a status and some option to users.

Everything works well beside that systray app uses 20-30MB of RAM ! it have to work in terminal environment, when 50 users login, only systray apps take >1GB of RAM ! and i don't have to add, that's wrong :)

Is it possible to write .net systray application that will be small ? (1-2MB max?) or should I write it in c/c++? then, what kind of communication should I use between windows service (written in C#) and systray app ?

Answer 1

It's most likely that the memory usage issues you are experiencing are specific to your application, rather than all sys-tray apps built with .NET.

You should profile your application to determine where the large memory usage is happening.

Answer 2

Another consideration is that a lot of memory consumed by .NET apps is in shared (.NET) dlls, and will not duplicate when multiple instances are run (unless the OS uses randomized dll load addresses).

You can also reduce the memory used by JIT compiling by installing your assemblies to the GAC and pre-JITting them using ngen. Again, this will result in reduced memory usage unless the OS randomizes dll load addresses.

Answer 3

Your sys-tray application is probably having memory leaks. A good profiling tool can help you understand what's happening.

Answer 4

So, if i decide to write systray app in c/c++ what kind of communication should I use between windows service (written in C#) and systray app ?

Answer 5

We faced similar problem in past and I'd share my solution with you.

.Net framework TCP/IP library is pathetically under-performing and eats up memory like anything.

As solution to this we opted to to XF library from KODART an open-source high-performance TCP/IP library for .Net applications. It scales amazingly on multiple client connections.

You can establish TCP/IP channels using XF library and observe the results yourself.

Checkout this article for additional information.

Answer 6

The release of WCF (.NET 3.0 or 3.5?) rendered .NET remoting obsolete. With WCF you have the option of hosting a WCF server in your Windows service and then communicate with your service through TCP/IP. In my experience WCF is far more stable than .NET remoting.

Depending on your needs you may want to consider using ServiceController instead of remoting or WCF. With ServiceController you can start and stop services and you can also send application defined commands (as integers) to your service using Service.Controller.ExecuteCommand. Using ServiceController is a lot simpler than remoting and WCF but not as flexible.

Answer 7

If all you need is change icons in systray, change tooltip and show small context menu, by all means write your systray app in C/C++ using bare WinAPI, and use a message-mode named pipe to communicate with the service. Don't forget to use the Global\ pipe name prefix to allow systray apps running in multiple sessions to connect to the same service.

Answer 8

I've added following line to my code (app calls it sometimes along with GC.Collect() )

System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().MaxWorkingSet =
                System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().MinWorkingSet;

Memory usage dropped to ~2MB (from 15-25MB), after nulling some objects after use (drawing menu and icon), memory usage dropped to ~540KB ! it grows a little (to ~2-3MB if I use context menu, but then it drops back to ~540KB)

So, goal achieved :)