Peer to Peer Sharing not working on Laptop

[St3v1e]

Hi everyone,

Absolutely new user to FMPA 18.

I managed to cobble a small database together using FMPA 18 on my 2018 iMac (Catalina 10.15.3), and want to share it over a local network with my laptop. I'd like to have the laptop log in via a user account (Data Entry only). I created a user account in the "Manage Security" section, and have made sure the user account has Data Entry only privilege & "write access to all records" is enabled under the advanced tab. I also checked that "fmreauthenticate10" & "fmapp" are checked (Advanced tab).

My firewall is off, and I've allowed File Sharing in the prefs of my iMac - pointing directly to the Filemaker Pro 18 Advanced folder located in my applications.

I installed FilemakerGo on my iPad, and can access the file in the Hosts area, but I'm not logging in via the user account I setup (no idea how to do that). But when I tried to connect to the host on my laptop (File/Hosts/Show Hosts), it's not finding the host. I've tried manually adding the host address (192.168.xx.xxx) & also pinged my iMac from the laptop (MacBook pro - 2016 model - running 10.14.6 Mojave)I don't see anything when I add the iMac's IP manually, but do get a response from the ping.

Why does it work on the iPad (iOS 13.1.2), but not on the MacBook?

What am I doing wrong & how do I log into either using the user account I set up on the host machine?

Thanks in advance

 

[Wim Decorte]

9 hours ago, St3v1e said:

and I've allowed File Sharing in the prefs of my iMac - pointing directly to the Filemaker Pro 18 Advanced folder located in my applications.

First thing: turn that off.  When hosting FM files to let someone else work in them, never ever use OS-level file sharing.  It's the surest way to corrupt your files.  FM has its own hosting and sharing mechanism that requires exclusive access to the actual files.  Anything that can interfere with that (like someone trying to open the file through an OS-level share) is going to cause issues in the long run.

9 hours ago, St3v1e said:

but I'm not logging in via the user account I setup (no idea how to do that).

That is probably because the file is still set to auto-login (it does that by default).  From the menu go to File > File Options, and uncheck the auto-login.

 

9 hours ago, St3v1e said:

when I tried to connect to the host on my laptop (File/Hosts/Show Hosts), it's not finding the host.

You mention that it works from the iPad: how did you add the host to the iPad to connect to?  It should work exactly the same on the other machine.

[St3v1e]

Hi Wim,

Thanks (once again) for your input, all very valuable in these early stages.

I've now turned off Filesharing as per your recommendations, and I'd not set a password for the Admin account, hence why I couldn't log in via a user account. All that is now in place and working.

There's obviously something going on with the laptop as I just enetered the local IP address on the IP and immediately saw the host file.

I'll get back to you when I've re-checked my network/firewall etc settings on the laptop.

[St3v1e]

Seems (after several hours of troubleshooting) there's another issue with the MacBook Pro, still haven't found out what it is, but we have a few problems relating to the OS and sharing. So for now, we're sharing the FMP database with another iMac which is working well. So I'm presuming once we identify the networking issue on the MacBook Pro, this too will have access to the database.

I'll leave this post for now but thanks for your help Wim.

[St3v1e]

Update: So after several weeks of encountering problems with the MacBook Pro, I decided to back it up & re-load the OS (High Sierra).

Problems have all now been solved and I can access the file on the internal network.