Can a shortcut be created to become a guest for a Server hosted file? Would a shortcut to the file in the folder it is stored in be the same thing. Also, what is the exact syntax to tell Server to stop serving files so that a backup can be taken (I dont need the syntax for creating the backup - MS Server 2003 is handling that)

Keith:

What you're looking for is called an Opener File. You put a FileMaker file on the client machine which auto-runs a script which opens a file on the server. When using FM Server, this is pretty much a necessity, to ensure that users do not attempt to open files via any kind of file-sharing arrangement. File sharing should be turned OFF on the server machine so that the only way to access the FileMaker files is via the File-->Open Remote, or via the Opener File.

-Stanley

If you can create an OS shortcut to the files on the FMS machine that means that OS level file sharing is on. And that is very very bad, it's the #1 reason for data & file corruption.

Stanly outlined the correct way of doing it.

As to the backups: the best setup is like this:

- use the built-in FMS backup process (guests are not disconnected)

- have FMS put the backup files somewhere where the OS backup can find them

- exclude the live FMS files from the OS backup

If you want to pause filemaker server (to make the files safe for OS backup) you need to issue the 'fmserver pause' command line command.

To stop the service and close the files do a 'fmserver stop'.

This is all for FMS 5/5.5. The syntax is different for FMS7