session0 isolation in Windows 2008/windows7

Question

I have a C++ application which used Mutex, Events,Semaphores for synchronization. While hosted in windows 2008 server/Windows 7, this application is not starting from a remote client. I used telnet client to connect remotely to this application and saw that telnet server is running under session 0 and therefore it is trying to start my application under session 0. My application is trying call OpenMutex to open a mutex which was created by another application running locally (in session 1).

I can make my application work by perpending "Global\" to mutex name. What I am looking for is a way run application without making this code change. Is it even possible? Is it possible to launch telnet service under session 1.

CreateMutex(&sa,FALSE,Buffer, "MyMutexName"));
I can modify this to CreateMutex(&sa,FALSE,SYS_ID2(szSysIdBuffer, "Global\MyMutexName")); but is there any other way other that making this change. Thanks

Answer 1

You probably know the document http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysinternals/session0changes.mspx which describes problems with the Session 0 isolation. The old way to make a service interactive which are described in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms683502.aspx not works on Widows 7 because Terminal Services are active per default.

So it seems to me that in your case the way with the "Global\" prefix, which you currently use, is really the best one. To understand the complexity of an other possible way you can read following http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3396134/process-with-administrative-privileges-run-on-user-logon/3397099#3397099.