Installing FileMaker Server on FreeBSD

It is very little known that FileMaker Server can be run on freeBSD systems with the linux binary compatability installed. This gives you the advantage of a rock-stable, speedy server even on limited hardware. However, the installation process is not entirely trivial, since the FileMaker rpm needs to run some scripts in order to install the software. Following a brief description of the steps involved:

1. Manually create a user and a group namd "fmserver". I choose UID/GID of 5003, according to the TCP port FileMaker Server is using. The user does not have to have many priviledges.

2. If not aleady installed, install the linux binary compatability enviroment

cd /usr/ports/emulators/linux_base

make install distclean

3. enable the linux enviroment using /stand/sysinstall -> Configure -> Startup -> Linux

reboot

4. Install the FileMaker binary:

mount /cdrom

/compat/linux/bin/rpm -i --nodeps --noscripts /cdrom/Linux/fmserver-5.5-1.i386.rpm

5. adjust the startup scripts in /compat/linux/etc/rc.d/init.d/fmserverd.sh, changing all paths to

"/compat/linux + path

6. Now edit the /compat/linux/etc/fmserverd.conf, prepending any path with /compat/linux

7. change the owner of the /compat/linux/var/log/fmserver and /compat/linux/var/fmserver directories, so they are writable by fmserver:fmserver

8. if necessary, create the logfiles with touch and set permissions to 666

9. now proceed as in the FileMaker Server README

Here is an additional script which backups the entire database. It should be run by cron:

#!/bin/sh

/compat/linux/usr/bin/fmserverd PAUSE

cp -Rf /compat/linux/var/fmserver/* /usr/home/fmserver/backup

/compat/linux/usr/bin/fmserverd RESUME

chown -R fmserver:fmserver /usr/home/fmserver/backup