Automatic startup of files? OS X (Panther) Server

[hayward]

I'm having difficulty with what *should* be a simple thing: having my OS X Server automatically startup FileMaker Pro 6 Unlimited (with Web Server Connector) and open two web-shared files. Can anyone descibe how they have set this up on their servers?

At present I have the server set up to

(1) autologin a user at system boot, and

(2) set up the following items in that user's Startup Items:

(a) StartFMWSC.command (the shell script which starts the Web Server Connector)

( an FM file which has a script that attempts to open both of the web-shared files

This is not only clumsy (surely there must be a way to do this (using cron?) which doesn't require autologin of a user?) but it doesn't always work: depending on timing, FileMaker itself won't always open both shared files "in time": if this happens I will see the FileMaker icon bouncing in the Dock. Clicking on the Dock icon will allow FM to proceed with opening the necessary shared databases.

Thanks for any and all suggestions on this. Surely *someone* else out there has needed to do this and has come up with a solution that they can share...

[Vaughan]

Attached is a simple AppleScript applet that launches FMP then opens the Web Security database. A startup script in the Web Security database then opens all of the necessary FMP files.

FMP (and FMPU) do not run as services/daemons so Mac OS X must be set up to auto-login as a user. There is AFAIK no way around it.

Some people run FMP as a service under Windows NT and 2000 (there is a process documented to run any application as a service under Windows) but it is a practice that FMP strictly does not recommend.

Open Web Security Database.zip

[hayward]

Thanks for the reply Vaughan.

Your approach sounds identical to one I've tried as well: I built an Applescript applet to: "tell application "Finder" to open file "<filemaker file>"" - where "<filemaker file>" contains a startup script to open both my web-shared files. The applet runs fine; Filemaker starts up fine; it begins to open the file (and thence the other files) - but for some reason the FM windows (one per file it is trying to open) don't open up as I'd expect: the FM icon bounces in the Dock, and the FM windows don't appear (i.e. the files don't actually open) until I click on the Dock icon.

There are a couple of other Startup Items involved: the shell script which starts the Web Server Connector (StartFMWSC.command); and GeekTool. I've tried arranging these 3 Startup Items in different order: same result...

I'm guessing that FM "bounces" because it is not the foreground application when it gets started as a Startup Item. The StartFMWSC.command script starts up something called FMWSC_Apache, which always becomes the frontmost application, putting FM into the background...

[Steve T.]

Hi, hayward! It took us a while to figure out somethng for us, too. Mac OS X startup items seems to time out after a while and the commands to open/launch seem to drop. To get around this, we have FileMaker do most of the work...

On our systems, we have FMP-Unlimited launch on startup followed by the Web Security Database. We then created a STARTUP script in the WSD that opens all of our other databases. The STARTUP script can be set to auto-launch on db open in the FMP Documents Preferences.

For us, this works every time... no muss, no fuss... simple, too. I hope it can work for you, too. Sorry, I haven't braved the Web Server Connector world yet.

--ST

[dwal]

Try using

tell application "FileMaker Pro"

launch

end tell

I had problems using "tell application "Finder" to open file "<filemaker file>". I am not sure how to get your specific FileMaker file to open. I think this can be set in the opening dialogue of FileMaker.