Register as a Windows service
Prerequisites
The following changes are made in C:\gitea\custom\conf\app.ini:
RUN_USER = COMPUTERNAME$
Sets Gitea to run as the local system user.
COMPUTERNAME is whatever the response is from echo %COMPUTERNAME% on the command line. If the response is USER-PC then RUN_USER = USER-PC$
Use absolute paths
If you use SQLite3, change the PATH to include the full path:
[database]
PATH = c:/gitea/data/gitea.db
Register Gitea
To register Gitea as a Windows service, open a command prompt (cmd) as an Administrator, then run the following command:
sc.exe create gitea start= auto binPath= "\"C:\gitea\gitea.exe\" web --config \"C:\gitea\custom\conf\app.ini\""
Do not forget to replace C:\gitea with the correct Gitea directory.
Open "Windows Services", search for the service named "gitea", right-click it and click on
"Run". If everything is OK, Gitea will be reachable on http://localhost:3000 (or the port
that was configured).
Service startup type
It was observed that on loaded systems during boot Gitea service may fail to start with timeout records in Windows Event Log.
In that case change startup type to Automatic-Delayed. This can be done during service creation, or by running config command
sc.exe config gitea start= delayed-auto
Adding startup dependencies
To add a startup dependency to the Gitea Windows service (eg Mysql, Mariadb), as an Administrator, then run the following command:
sc.exe config gitea depend= mariadb
This will ensure that when the Windows machine restarts, the automatic starting of Gitea is postponed until the database is ready and thus mitigate failed startups.
Unregister Gitea
To unregister Gitea as a Windows service, open a command prompt (cmd) as an Administrator and run:
sc.exe delete gitea