FMP Error

[Teblhasa]

I am having a serious problem with FMP on my Mac computers. We are set up with one computer as a host, and the other two computers access the program as guest through the host's desktop. When we had 5.5, it worked fine, but now that we have 6, we are having problems. I keep getting the error message "Communication with the host was interrupted and could not be re-established (-3259)" whenever I try to either create a new shipping document or I do a search, but sometimes I cannot even open these files. Does anybody have an idea what's going on?

[KateT]

I don't know if I can be of much help, but I'm having the same problem.

Ours started when two of us made the move from Classic to OS X. We were the only people having problems, and it was exactly what you just described.. Two or three months ago, we changed servers. The last one was running in classic and the current one is in 10.2. We also changed FileMaker Pro 4.1 to 6.0 and FileMaker Server 3.0 to 5.5. When we did that, those of us in OS X stopped having any problems, but everyone running in Classic developed the same problem you described.

This all makes me suspect it has something to do with the operating systems being out of sync. Teblhasa, let me know if your experiences contradict or support that pseudo theory. If you or anyone else can help, you will have my eternal gratitude.

[Teblhasa]

I just got my problem solved, in fact! Quite strange, really. We access our FMP files through a named network folder which has over a gig of junk, sorry, files, and I was told on another forum to try and make a clone of the folder containing all the FMP files, and then dump it by itself somewhere. I did that, and no more problems!

I don't know if you have these files in a large folder, but if you do, I suggest you try the same thing. If it doesn't work, you could try viewing my question over at www.maclane.com because the person who helped me had a few other suggestions. Otherwise, give me more specifics and I will see if I can help you out at all (where the files are located, how you are accessing them, what's on your network, etc.)

Anne

[Vaughan]

"We access our FMP files through a named network folder..."

Sorry to say, this is the *worst* way to share FMP files. Corruption will sneak in slowly but surely.

Instead, set up a computer as a FM Host running FMP (or better yet FMS) and get all users to connect to the databases through the Hosts button.

[Teblhasa]

I am still having the same problem, unfortunately. I was hoping it would clear up. Any more suggestions???

[Vaughan]

Read the FileMaker Server Best Practices White Paper on the FileMaker Inc web site. Set yourself up a FM host.

[Steve T.]

Hi, Teblhasa & KateT (thought you were ray cobaltsky at first!)... I must echo Vaughan and recommend you use the HOSTS... or OPEN REMOTE feature instead.

Try making a clean new test database and see how it works, though. If it's still no good, then IMO you're out of luck (I thought they had disabled that in FM5 but I guess not... maybe just disabled in OS X). If, however, the clean db is okay, then maybe you can go back to an earlier version of the db (Vaughan also advises to keep empty shells of finished db's in case they get corrupted later) and re-import your data or re-create the db if it's not too complex. If the problem is indeed db corruption, search for other db recovery tips in the posts if re-importing data into a non-corrupt shell does not work.

Good luck!

--ST