OS X and FM Server Nightmare!

[dschaal]

I just got off the phone with Technical Support........

I had a series of databases over the last couple of months that have been closing incorrectly but when I recovered them it said that everything was fine.

Today, the server just shut down one of the files, so I decided to call technical support.

This tech told me that I had to do the following procedure!

Find a really old backup. Clone it. Recover it for the structure.

Make changes to it so it matches the current version.

Export the data in a merge file. Import the data to the clone.

Recover it.

And then put it back out there.

Since I thought the recovery process was really recovering we have since taped over the backups many times so all of those file are corrupted. We did find copies from 2000 (before I even started working here) but I have made so many changes to multiple databases I don't even know where to begin the update.

At no time did the tech tell me that it was OS X and FM Server that was causing the problem together.

Is FM insane??? Why wouldn't they have warned us???

I'm absolutely stunned........

[Fitch]

I know a lot of folks around here are purists and will tell you never to use a recovered file, but in the real world people do it all the time. Especially in cases like yours, where it's just not practical to recreate the thing from scratch. Just do regular backups in case something does happen -- but you'd normally be doing that anyway.

I don't know if FileMaker is sane or not, but it has acknowledged a problem with OS X and FileMaker Server, from an article dated Feb. 2003:

http://www.filemaker.com/ti/108428.html

[Paolo]

Restoring a backup copy doesn't mean starting from scratch!

I 've scheduled frequent backups over the day (3). In case of any failure I restore the last backup. If there is vital data in the crashed files I recover them and import vital data into the restored backup.

FM is insane ? Yes, because is distributing FMS for OSX even if it has serious bugs that may cause serious loss of time and data. Also, I think the problem haven't been acknowledged enough!

[dschaal]

I think you are misunderstanding me.

FM technical support told me that even though a file has been "recovered" and it says that there are no problems recovering that file; it isn't true.

There are structural problems that have yet to show up and the only way to guarantee that you have a clean file is to go back to before the problems showed up. For me that will be a version from 2000.

I asked him what I should do if I didn't have a "clean" copy to start from and he told me that the "recovery" process is flawed and FM could not guarantee that my files will continue to work.

So, even if you are using a recovered file (which I have no problem doing), and backing it up every day incrementally and a full backup every two weeks like we do.......FM is saying that a more serious problem can occur at any given time because their recovery process doesn't clean the file completely.

You could restore the file but it will still be corrupted.

My biggest grievance is that I believed that their recovery process would fix the problems. No database is immune to corrupt files......I just thought they would have a way to ensure that you could fix them when it occurred.

I think it is irresponsible of them not tell your customers of this problem. They are still advertising FileMaker Server on their website for OS X and in fact have a statement that this version is the last they will make for OS 9.

They need to address this major flaw in their product.

Donna

[LiveOak]

I agree that this issue has been played down by FMI. That is why the administrators of the forums have recommended not moving server to OS X, yet.

There is a good practice you should follow to help with this problem. Whenever you make changes to the structure of your files, make clones of the files (no records) and archive these clones. When (not if) you have a problem and need to perform a recovery, you can import the data from the recovered files into copies of the empty clones and get a fresh, uncorrupted copy of the database structure.

We also make it standard practice to do daily backups to CD-R so the full range of all historical versions of the files is available.

-bd

[Paolo]

Hi Donna,

I did not misunderstand you. What I said was in reply to Fitch.

What you say is completely true, that's why I suggest to never use a recovered file (except for -export- vital data and reimport in the backup file)

Unfortunatly you used recovered files and now are in trouble.

If you are lucky enought only one file is currupt. Do the recovery-from-old-backup procedure that fm tech support suggested for just that file.

BTW

I also suggest you a different backup policy:

I have 4 scheduled backups every day, into 4 folders. (Those folder hold backup for the last 24 hours)

Every 2-3 days I make a copy of a scheduled-backup folder. I give it as name the current date (es backup-2003-07-10) and I store it on a different drive on a different machine.

Sometimes I make a CD with my incremental backups.

[Fitch]

I don't think there's been any misunderstanding. We all agree that FileMaker's problems with FM Server on OS X are outrageous and ridiculous. However, if you follow their guidelines for closing files, it works fine, in fact it works very well and many, many people are running mission-critical solutions with FM Server on OS X.

As for recovered files, again, we all agree it's ideal to never use crashed or recovered files. But most of us don't live in that utopia. So FileMaker won't "guarantee" the integrity of a recovered file -- so what? Do they guarantee the integrity of any database, recovered or not? (Hint: no.) My point was that many, many people have used files for years that have been recovered multiple times. As long as you always have a recent backup, there's not much difference between a recovered file and a non-recovered file going up in flames. In both cases, you go to the most recent backup and restore.

[dschaal]

For the record.....I did not close these files incorrectly. The FileMaker Server closed these files. I was trying to use them and they abruptly closed. The server connection was just lost. No power outage, etc. Everything was fine and then it wasn't.

This is what the tech was telling me that even when you "recover" them you really aren't fixing anything. They may open again and then maybe they won't.

And unfortunately for us the server has "incorrectly closed" 5 of our major files out of 30+ databases.

Donna

[jfmcel]

I think the only sound way to use FM server on OS X is to assume that the moment the files are opened by the server they are corrupt. I've been doing all my development off-line and then importing the data from the server files and then replacing the server files. It is a pain in the --- but seems to work.

[Vaughan]

Well folks, I set up a development server with FMS 5.5 a month or so ago. Two servers in fact, both 3 yr old G4 400MHz with 310 MB RAM and internal Zip drive. Nice when new but not hot any more. (I ended up with 10 of them when their lease got screwed up and their title reverted to me, so I have lots of machines for testing!)

The first server I set up had MacOS 9.0.4. I ran it for a few weeks, no problems except making sure the FMS app was in the foreground -- boy it bogs down when in the background.

I changed it two weeks ago with an identical machine except for Mac OS X 10.1.5. It works well. The stats coming out of server indicate that network and disk access are much faster than MacOS 9 machine but with just one user on it now (me) it's hard to tell. Importantly however is no problems with file corruption.

What's important is that I just did some serious testing regarding the OS X bug. I have been cautiously closing FMS using the FMS Config application for over a week without any problems. Today I shut down the computer without first closing FMS, while I even had a client still connected! Opened it up again and the files are OK -- opened them in FMP on the server and no complaints about consistency checks or anything. (I changed the files anyway with backups, just in case).

I know it's only one test, but for me FMS on Mac OS X 10.1.5 is stable and fast.

[Kurt Knippel]

Wonder if this is a possible conflict with a particular version of OS X?

Vaughan, what version are you running on those machines?

[dschaal]

The problems are continuing in our shop......in fact, it's getting worse. The corrupt files have now spread to some of the more minor ones.

I had two collapse again today.

I checked and the version of OS X that we are running is 10.2.3.

Donna

[Anatoli]

Why not FMS on Linux? It is not so far from X.

Or Windows?

[dschaal]

No argument from me......but I'm not the one who supports the network in our building.

I'm going to try to convince the powers that be to go back to OS 9. We didn't have any of these problems when we were using that.