Bad update of internal links?

[Paolo]

I have some files server with FM server.

I did a lot of minor development while the files were "online" accessing them remotely.

When I was creating relationships or selecting external scripts I was locating files using the "Host" button.

Now I want to take the files offline, to do some more important development.

When the files are not online relationships and ext-scripts doesn't work becouse FM is unable lo locate the files on the network (they are no more on the net, they are local, all in the same directory!)

So I run FM Developer and choose "Rename files". I let FM Dev run trought my files (without actually renaming).

I thought this is the correct way to clean the files from "remote" internal links.

In fact I could then open the files locally with no problems.

The problems came when I put the files online again with fm server.

Now it happens that some related files are opened twice!

For example: I look at the "Window" menu (mac) and I see

FILE_A

(FILE_:

(FILE_:

Did I do something wrong ?? What do you think??

Thanks in advance

[Lee Smith]

How many copies of FILE_B are on your hard drive?

[Paolo]

many, the one served with FM server (in the FM Serv directory) and the backup ones placed in the backup directories.

However I think there should be no interference since the hard drive is organized like this:

myDrive

--FMServer

----myFiles

------FileB

--backup

----myFilesBackup_gen

------FileB

----myFilesBackup_feb

------FileB

----myFilesBackup_mar

------FileB

I had, in the past, interference problems. But FM was just opening the wrong file, not opening the file twice!

[Kurt Knippel]

What is happening is that all these files exist on the same machine, albeit different directories and Filemaker is having a hard time distinguishing between them.

It is best to do "offline" development on a machine that is NOT the server. This way there is no way for Filemaker to be confused as to which file is the right one, since they only exist in one place. Also this will prevent you from being confused and accidentially selecting one of the backup files.

FMServer was NOT opening the same file twice, it was opening 2 files with the same name.

[Paolo]

I did development offline, on a non-server machine, only one copy of the file on the HD.

Many copies are present only on the server machine since the HD stores the served files and the backups.

Is this bad?

The backups are in a lower level directory than the filemaker server (closer to root)

for example:

file served is here

MyHD/FMServer/myFiles/fileB

backup file is here

MyHD/Backups/myFilesBackupMarch/FileB

there is no way (i think) to fm server to confuse the backup file with the served one.

[Lee Smith]

[color:"blue"] Is this bad?

You tell us, it's the reason that you are getting multiple copies of the same file being opened at the same time.

You should change the names, or .sit (.zip) them. But, it would be better to store the backups on a different machine.

Lee

[Kurt Knippel]

Well given the fact that you are experiencing multiple files of the same name opening, this confusion must be more likely than you think.

Seriously those are so close in structure that I myself might find it easy to mix them up. And once they get mixed up once by someone, then FMS will have references to both sets and may mix them up as well.

I would suggest the following: Close all files. Move the backups to a seperate HD, possibly a mounted volume from your file server (accessible ONLY to the Filemaker Server). Open the real DB files in a copy of Filemaker Pro with networking disabled. Make sure to move around and make sure that all the references are correct (this may take alot of time). Then reopen the files in Filemaker Pro with networking enabled and make sure that they are all set to multi-user. Finally close them again and reopen in Filemaker Server.

The above procedure should have a fairly good chance of resolving all the links and by moving the backups to another volume you should be OK.

[Paolo]

Ok, I'll try your suggestions.

Thank you!