Installation Script for MBS Plugin for FileMaker Servers with Windows

Over the last years we had various instructions to install MBS Plugin on a FileMaker Server. Today we have a new way: an installation script wininstall.ps1 (and wininstall.bat).

This script downloads the MBS Plugin and install it. We put a lot of effort into making this secure and verify that the plugin is correct one. Especially we try to

• avoid installing the Windows plugin on Linux/macOS by accident,

• avoid installing the wrong plugin if we mixed them up server side,

• avoid installing a half downloaded plugin or an error page.

This script is to help Windows administrators and we may improve it based on your feedback.

How to use

You can copy and paste these commands to the Powershell window running as Administator:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process Bypass;
iwr https://monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/gzip/wininstall.ps1 -OutFile wininstall.ps1;
.\wininstall.ps1

Should work fine with being on the machine locally or remote via SSH.

What the script does

• Verifies you are running on Windows

• Downloads the correct MBS plugin securely (HTTPS)

• Verifies:

  • Download success

  • Gzip integrity

  • PE binary type

  • Minimum size (> 20 MB)

  • Code Signature

• Installs MBS.fmx into:

  • Database Server/Extensions

  • Web Publishing (cwpc) Plugins

  • Data API (wip) Plugins

• Sets safe permissions (644)

Parameters

If you like, you can pass --silent to run the script silently. Or use --no-emoji to not output emojis if you don't like them. But we also detect if the terminal should be able to handle them and disable emojis if they may not work. Emojis need an UTF-8 capable terminal and won't work for redirects.

Bat Version

The old command prompt can't do the same things as PowerShell. But if you can run the bat file in a CMD window (as administrator), then it can download the other script and run it.

Restart or not?

Restarting the server is a way to get FileMaker to recognize the newly installed plugin. Easy as it makes sure you restart Script Engine, Data API and Web Direct and they all see the plugin.

But if you run the install script between installation and setup in admin-console, you don't need to restart at all.

Anytime later you install, you may need to do a "fmsadmin restart fmse" for the admin-console to see the new plugin. And run "fmsadmin restart wpe" as well as "fmsadmin restart fmdapi" for Web Direct and Data API.

Before restarting anything, please check what sessions are currently running as you may interrupt them. The admin-console has a checkbox to prevent new logins temporarily to prevent people to login just before the service is restarted.

All scripts

You find all scripts and the gzip files are in the gzip folder.

Scripts: linuxinstall.sh, macinstall.sh, wininstall.ps1 (and wininstall.bat)

Blog articles: Linux, macOS and Windows.

See also Bootstrapping MBS FileMaker Plugin for a script to install the plugin by loading it from our website in FileMaker Pro. The script is included with "Install Plugin Update if needed.fmp12" file.

Please try and let us know if that helps you.