FMP 6.0 using Mac OS X Server crashes suddenly

[Kelley]

I am new to this whole FMP world and the Mac world, so this may be an obvious question. My office recently upgraded all our computers to run on OS X, with a new OS X Server. We use FMP 6.0 for all of our business activities. We have eight computers hooked up to the server and access filemaker files through hosts. But every once in a while everyone will get kicked off the server and the message says something like "communication was lost with the host" then we have to re-open all files. Sometimes one of the files is corrupt and we have to Recover the lost file. Once this is done, we run like normal. But these crashes are starting to happen multiple times throughout the day. We recently hooked up another user on the server, I don't know if that would effect anything. So, I was wondering if anyone had similar problems with communication lost with their server? And if anything could be done to stop it?

Thanks,

Kelley

[Fitch]

First of all, it's critical that the server has the most current updates. Early versions of server on OS X had known file corruption problems.

[Kelley]

As far as I can see, we are current with our updates on the server.

Kelley

[Steve T.]

Hi, Kelley!

I hear a corrupt db can cause problems like that, and so can files upgraded from earlier versions. Some folks recommend keeping empty shells of the databases so you can export data from the corrupted db into nice clean shells and the problems all go away. I have not done this, but it has apparently helped others.

You could also try hosting db's from a client instead of the server and see if there's any difference. My guess is that you'll continue to get crashes, but if you don't, that will help narrow the problem down to the server machine. BTW, is the server using FM Server or just FM standard client software? Is it an X Serve? Are you also using the server for other services (file, application, print, web, e-mail, ftp)?

--ST

[lonntj]

We had this same problem with a nearly identital setup. It happened lots when someone was actively doing work on the server when logged in as a different user than the one running filemaker (using fast user switching). Now we leave the server alone and haven't had any problems.