server 5.5 crashes on xserve

[pierrehk]

We are running 63 files on FMP sever 5.5 on a xserve (1Ghz, RAM 1 GB, 6 clients all macintosh)

It very often (several times a day) crashes, closing the connection on each client.

The log diplays: file <one of the files, different each time> has been closed due to serious error.

And the closed file is, of course, corrupted after beeing closed.

The pb can apparently happen without anybody doing a "special" operation

Since yesterday, we have tried to run our base on FMP6, no pb except we are 6 and the non server version allows only 5 connections...

Please help!!

Pierre

[Wim Decorte]

The key may be in what you do after the files crash. Do you recover them or go back to a good known backup? If you keep working with crashed files (even after a recovery) that might be the problem.

In itself FMS is a remarkebly stable piece of software...

Do you have a spare machine to install FMS on, doesn't have to be an Xserve for now. If the files keep crashing there too then it really is the files.

Any other software running on the Xserve that might be interfering?

HTH

Wim

[pierrehk]

I searched what could be the cause of all these pb, thought maybe it was because i didnt use the last version, so i have updated the server to v4 and all the clients to v2.... still crashes

After i noticed that it was actually when I particulat computer connects that the pb happen: i formatted and reinstalled everything, and since now it works fine....

[LiveOak]

If you see these sorts of problems with FMS, you should always take a look at the basic integrity of the operating system. I find that even after a clean install of OS X it is important to run a utility such as Alsoft Disk Warrior and to use Disk Utility to repair permissions. Before a compatible version of Disk Warrior was available for OS X, we often saw problems we couldn't quite pin down. Running Disk Warrior (and repairing permissions) seems to clean up a lot of these.

The comments on using recovered files are important. Making clone backups after every database structure change is a good practice. After a crash, using these clean clones and importing data from the recovered files gives the best chance of preventing future problems. I like using CD-R's for backups (NOT CD-RW). Burning one CD-R a day gives the ability to roll back and recover from such things as records deleted and not discovered for a period of time.

-bd