files work with client - but won't be hosted!!!

[Big_Tom]

Ok folks - I'm ready to throw my Apple 23" cinema display and dual G5 out the window this problem is so frustrating.

A week ago our FileMaker Pro server (Win 2k server) crashed. The boot.ini file was missing and we thought the issue was only a hardware problem. All the hardware problems have been fixed though, the drives reformatted (FM databases were transferred to a network drive & an external hd for safekeeping during this work), the OS installed again from scratch. Well - we could barely get the computer to run once we began hosting the databases with server 5.5.

We decided to examine the possibility that it was a FM issue and not a hardware problem. We found that many of our databases wouldn't open in FM client. We have successfully recovered most of these files. A few that wouldn't cooperate we took from a slightly older backup and used to replace the files we couldn't recover. When these new installations of FM and Windows 2000 server along with the recovered data folder didn't get us in the clear we began to despair.

Since then we have migrated all our data to the aforementioned Mac running OS X Panther. We have successfully recovered and opened all but one or two of our files. These files that won't restore properly will be reconstituted by hand or just deleted. We installed the FM server module (and client) on this Mac (it's running FM server 5.5v4). When we start the FM Server service it shows most of our files. About 20 refuse to be hosted though.

This is thoroughly confusing to the three of us working together on this crisis. Why these files open without issue at all on the machine when we double click them (they open locally with the FM client of course) - yet they appear as 'closed' files when we log into the server via 'remote administration' is supremely frustrating! When we try to 'open' the files via remote admin we receive the following error: "Error occurred; unable to open file"

Please help me out with any advice you might be able to give. I've tried renaming these files but they just refuse to be hosted by the server module despite the fact that the client doesn't see anything wrong with them at all.

Just to recap we're using filemaker pro server 5.5 v4 on a mac running OS X panther;

we're using FileMaker Pro 5.5 client to access these files on a variety of computers ranging from OS 9 G4 iMacs to WinXP P-4 3 Ghz machines.

someone please save me,

~Tom

[Steve T.]

Hi, Big_Tom! Until the cavalry arrives or someone here at FMFORUMS says, "Oh, that's easy... the same thing happened to me and all you have to do is...", maybe check things like file permissions. Mac OS X is a serious stickler for things like that. Maybe see if 1 of those OS9 clients can host w/FMP client and are accessible to others on the network. If so, maybe temporarily install Server on one and see if you can get a working model SOMEWHERE, then you can focus back on why it's not working from THAT particular machine.

Sorry, I don't know FM Server so cannot guess why it isn't happy. C'mon folks, help Tom out!

--ST

P.S. if you throw out the G5 and cinema display, throw it my way... my G4 cube is feeling overworked these days.

[Kurt Knippel]

Hmm, this does not sound like simple permission issues. It sounds like you have some major corruption going on in the files themselves. It will not hurt to repair permissions using Disk Utility.

I would make sure that all of the DB open in a copy of Filemaker Pro client, and make sure that the sharing is marked as Multi-user. It could be that a couple of the files are set as single user.

If any of the DB do not open in Filemaker Pro client, they will not open in server either.

Finally that G5 is way overkill for Filemaker Server 5.5, it cannot take advantage of the dual processors and only uses about 40MB of RAM maximum. Running it on the an OS9 machine may provide more stable performance.

[Keith LaMarre]

Other things to look at...

1: If these files are single user, make certain the FileMaker Pro Server is set to host single user files.

2: Make certain that the FM server is able to host enough files.

Both of these are in the config area of FM Server (Files)

[stanley]

Tom:

Welcome to the Forums; you're watching the cavalry at work. All of the above is excellent advice, especially regarding permissions. However, another thing is that recovering files in FMP doesn't necessarily mean you've got a working copy. You should always have a clone of your current files, so that when you have to recover, you can import the data from the recovered file into the clone. Recovered files often have internal instabilities, which will cause them to misbehave or crash...

So, to summarize everyone's points:

1. Check your permissions in OSX - this is a common problem when transferring files.

2. Check within FMS that you're set to host single user files.

3. Check that you can host enough files.

4. Try to import your data into files that weren't involved at the time of the crash.

-Stanley

[Big_Tom]

Hey folks - thanks for the quick cavalry charge!

I'm currently in the process (after discovering that permissions were indeed the culprit most of the time) of re-constituting the files starting over from a copy of our most recent backup.

I'm hoping that this time I will just be able to check the permissions on some of the files and that will again solve my problems.

Thanks for all the help!