Why does VEB service require the Windows BITS service

[chaycock]

I was having an issue with the VEB service crashing right after it started. I contacted support and they were able to determine it was because the Windows BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer) service was not running. Windows uses this to download things such as updates in the background.

I have a few questions I am hoping the developers can answer:

1) What is the VEB service doing that would cause it to need to use the BITS system which is for transferring files? What files is it trying to transfer (especially right at startup of the service)

2) If the BITS service is required to be running, why is it not listed in the "Dependencies" tab of the service properties dialog for the VEB service? There are other service dependencies listed. Had it been listed, the system would have either started BITS or raised an error letting me know exactly what the problem was instead of the service just crashing due to an unhandled exception.

3) Why is there not adequate exception catching/handling to prevent something like this from bringing down the entire service, especially since this appears to be unrelated to the primary function of the VEB service.

Thanks,
Carlton

[PTide]

Hi,

1) What is the VEB service doing that would cause it to need to use the BITS system which is for transferring files? What files is it trying to transfer (especially right at startup of the service)

VEB checks for updates using BITS however it never downloads them unless you tell it to do so.

Regarding 2) and 3) - the behaviour when VEB service fails to start without BITS is being discussed at the moment as well as other related questions that you've raised in this thread.

Thanks for the feedback!

[chaycock]

It would seem doing the update check would be best done in a 'user mode' application such as the 'tray' or the main VEB configuration GUI, or a separate service, but not in the core backup service.

[Dima P.]

Carlton,

Agree. This is going to be fixed in upcoming version – update should not somehow affect the backup process.