Please help! FM Svr 7, +Advance, on OS X nightmare

[Justin D]

Hi everyone,

I'm about to shoot myself just trying to install FileMaker Server 7 Advanced.

Here's my setup:

Xserve running OS X Server 10.3.5, fully updated. 2GHz G5, 2GB RAM.

Services running: AFP, Apache (completely default), and FIleMaker Server 7. That's it.

(FWIW, all appropriate ports open on our firewall.)

This Xserve is basically brand new. I've been running FileMaker Server forever, and upgraded to FIleMaker Server 7 about 2 months ago. Thus far it's been running great.

We're putting up a new web site that will require a bit of integration with FileMaker Server. So, I had to purchase the Advanced add-on.

FM Server 7 and the Advanced package are on the SAME machine.

Installed Advanced, and it didn't work - the Web Publishing Administration Console ('Admin Console' from now on) would not come up when I accessed http://localhost/fmi/config or http://127.0.0.1/fmi/config. Talked to FM tech support, after doign a bit of troubleshooting, a complete uninstall, manual removal of the Web Publishing folder, and a reinstall did the trick. I was then able to access the Admin Console.

I punched in an Identifier and Passcode on the FM Server Admin application ('Admin App' from now on), and on the Admin Console side of things, entered the FM Server address as 127.0.0.1 and entered the Identifier and Passcode.

This did not work at first. In the Admin Console, in the FileMaker Server tab, under Server Address, I get the mesage: "The specified FileMaker Server is not accepting the Publishing Engine connection. Check the server or specify an alternate server." And in the Published Databases tab, I get: "The specified FileMaker Server is not licensed for additional Publishing Engine connections. Check the FileMaker Server license or click here to specify an alternate server." (NOTE: I already updated the license number in the Admin App to reflect the Advanced add-on, and the Admin App does report Publishing Engines as Permitted. FM tech support ran the serial number and it does check out as an Advanced serial, so no prob there...)

So... a full restart of the machine.... and voila! Things seemed to be working! Publishing Engine talking to Server, Published Database section working...

...and a few minutes later, it stopped working. And it does this on all consecutive reboots. Same error messages as before, even though the Admin App is showing that there is a Web Admin Console on the machine (which it wasnt doing before).

So I'm very very stuck. FM tech support escalated the case, but I needed this working yesterday, and both tech support and I are totally out of ideas short of a full reinstall of everything including the OS - since the OS is COMPLETELY unmodified and there are NO services other than AFP and Apache and the FileMaker ones running, this seems totally unnecessary, and would knock my users out for much too long for a fix that may not even work. ANY HELP on this would be greatly appreciated - in all my years of server work I've never run into a problem as dead-end as this.

Random items:

- I have started, stopped, and restarted the Web Publishing Engine via Terminal numerous times with no luck.

- IIRC, Tech support mentioned that there should be two processes called FM Web Publishin [sic] running, but I only see one. I can't kick all my users off to reboot the machine and see if there are TWO running during the time that this whole thing DOES work, unfortunately.

- To reiterate, FM Server 7 and the Advanced package are on the SAME machine, and I'm telling the engine to refer to the FM Server with 127.0.0.1. I have tried to swap this with 'localhost' but that does not work.

- I'm accessing the Admin Console through http://127.0.0.1/fmi/config. I've tried logging in other ways (localhost instead of 127.0.0.1, remotely from another computer using it's internal IP, etc) but it has not made a difference.

- ALL PORTS that FileMaker, Apache, Tomcat, etc. use are fully open on our firewall.

MANY THANKS in advance to anyone that can help out!

[Garry Claridge]

Which port is FMSA running on? If it is port 80 a conflict will occur with Apache.

Good Luck.

Garry

p.s. Check this thread for some possible insight:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=128037&an=0&page=0#128037

[Justin D]

Hi Garry,

Thanks for the tip. I tried changing the port for the default site in Apache to 100, unfortunately that did not solve the issue. But at the moment I cannot reboot the server - as the system seems to work for a few minutes upon a reboot, I will try changing the port to 100 and rebooting, and see if that solves the problem. =)

[jeffer]

How do you set the identier and passcode on the filemaker server? I know where to find it, but what is the data I need to type in? The password and the username of the file?

greetz,

Jeffrey

[Justin D]

Jeffrey -

They're arbitrary it seems. In the Configure -> Clients section of FM Server Admin, punch in an indentifier and passcode (I used 'databaseid' and 'databasepass'), then enter those once in the Advanced admin interface once it's setup.

Still haven't gotten mine working though...

[ibiubu]

I have mine working. Here is what my setup is.

In FileMaker server admin, go to the configure tab. Choose to add a FileMaker Web publishing Engine. For the Identifier and Passcode, enter anything you want. For this example, lets user 'hair' and 'bear'

If you are using OSX, make sure web sharing is on and running.

Next go to the following URL in your web browser:

http://localhost/fmi/config

First thing you will be asked to do is enter a console username and password. Make these up. These will be your admin information for anytime you want to use the web console.

Next thing you will want to do is set up the address, web publishing identifier, and web publishing passcode. For the address, use localhost (assuming advanced is running on the same machine as server). For Identifier and Passcode, enter the same ones you entered in FileMaker server admin. In this case it is 'hair' and 'bear'

Hit the 'Commit' button at the bottom of the page. You may also have to hit the 'Restart Publishing Engine' button at the bottom of the page.

Go to publishing engine tab, enable the settings you want running.

Go back to the FileMaker Server tab, then choose the link for published databases. If you have set up your databases correctly in the admin tool, you will see them in the list here.

This is basically the steps I took to get it all running.

Larry

[Guest]

Thanks! That helped me and I'm sure a lot of other lurkers as well. On W2K I choose the Properties for the server, selected the Clients tab, pressed "Enable Client Services" and added an identifier. Not that I've gotten it working I have to go back and figure what I did.

[Jim Randell]

How to go crazy in 5 easy steps!

I am having the same issue on win2ksv4.

I understand setting the identifier and Passcode in the 'enable client services' dialog box. that is not the issue.

after I do a clean install

[AnFrusch@pepp]

Hello,

did you solved the problems?

I think mine will be a stupid question.. but I have to ask you anyway:

do you start the FM publishing engine via Unix terminal (Darwin)?

If not you must do it:

this is the string you have to type on a shell window (you can find it in the manual too, )

# sudo SystemStarter start "FileMaker Web Publishing"

<!-- type start to start the engine, type stop to stop it and restart to restart the engine !-->

then restart Apache.. it should works.. sometimes I have the same orrible problem, sometimes I have to restart my G5 :-(

i think this tool has some bugs but it works properly after all.

See you!

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi

I think I'd might have the same problem.

The issue is to run the FM web engine on a OS X Server (with X server software)

I can make FMSA run on a Mac with the OS X client system. But when I try to run it on my server, I need to specify a site within the OS X Server Admin. To do so, I need to find the startpage. (usually index.html) but I can't figure how to set this within the OS X Server admin.

I think that the key to make this work is to figure how to set up the webservice within OS X Server Admin.

If you get further with this, please let me know.

;-) Claus

[armeen]

Does any one know if there is a limit on the number of identifer and passscodes that you can setup. I have one identifier and passcode setup but I can not create any additional ones. The "Add" button is grayed out under Configure -> Clients section of FM Server Admin.

Thanks,

Armeen

[jeffer]

You only need one identifier and password for one filemaker web publishing engine. When you use more than one web publishing engine, you can user more than one identifier and password.