Skip to content
PrintSentinel

Service, backups and updates

Day-to-day running: the Windows service, daily backups, updating the server and client PCs, and watching PrintSentinel itself.

Backups

The database is backed up every day, and before an update changes it. The last 7 daily and 10 manual copies are kept in %ProgramData%\PrintSentinel\backups for the service. Operators can back up now or restore in Settings → Backups. To keep a copy off the server, copy the newest file from that folder with a scheduled task.

Updates

  1. Run the new installer on the server as an administrator. It stops the service, replaces the files and starts it again. Your data is kept.
  2. Copy the same installer and its .sig file into %ProgramData%\PrintSentinel\updates on the server. Settings → Data & this PC → Updates confirms it is offered.
  3. Client PCs check the server after starting and every few hours, verify the publisher’s signature, download the update and offer Restart now or Later.

Browsers always load the server’s version. A client never moves ahead of the server, and never back to an older version.

If PrintSentinel itself stops

A monitoring PC that has stopped looks like a quiet day, so several things watch it:

  • The service restarts the monitoring if it crashes, or if it stops responding for 10 minutes.
  • If no poll finishes for 15 minutes, it restarts itself, then raises the critical problem Printers are no longer being checked.
  • After an outage of more than 5 minutes, Teams and email get Monitoring was down with the times.
  • Client PCs show a pop-up within about 3 minutes when they lose the server.

Heartbeat: create a check in an outside monitor such as Healthchecks.io or Uptime Kuma and paste its address into Settings → Outside monitoring → Heartbeat URL. PrintSentinel calls it every 5 minutes, only after a successful poll.

Health address: GET https://<server>:47631/api/health needs no key and answers 200 while polling works and 503 when it has stalled, for PRTG, Zabbix and similar tools.

Moving the server to another PC

Back up on the old server and restore the file on the new one with Settings → Backups → Restore from file… before running it as a service. Saved passwords are encrypted for the original PC, so re-enter the SNMP credentials, mail password, Teams address and heartbeat. Then turn sharing on and reconnect client PCs, checking the new fingerprint.