Files damaged while working in Filmaker Server 5.5

[ofcmark]

I am running Filemaker Server 5.5 on a MAC OS 10.3 server. I am having a problem with files becoming damaged while being accessed from client computers. I serve about 25 files and once one becomes damaged, they all start damaging. When I recover the files, they turn back into "read only" files and must be changed to "read and write' before they will serve. I access my OS X Server using MACS and PCS running Filmaker 5.0. I wonder if the cross platform is making a difference.

[stanley]

ofcmark:

Welcome to the Forums.

You should not have these problems with FMS, regardless of the cross-platform issue. Make sure you have the latest version of FMS 5.5 (whatever that may be), then make sure that all of your network users are accessing the databases via FileMaker's "Open Remote..." or via an opener file. Check that file sharing is turned off on the server to stop people from accessing the files via the OS, which is the usual suspect when it comes to file corruption.

Now comes the nasty part. The files you are using are now no good. When you use the "recover" function, the files you end up with usually still have some corruption. The recommended method is to have a "clean" clone of your solution (i.e., a version which has NEVER had to be recovered) and to import the data from the recovered files into the clone files. Then trash the recovered files and use the clones (remembering to stash a new set of the clones for future use).

Good luck

-Stanley

[mgm75]

Hi I am working with ofcmark to try to fix the issue. It has gotten worse now. Here is the situation We have a around 25 files being served. When we access 1 of the files over the host it opens an older copy. If we go to network places to the server and open it directly it is the correct file. There is no other file with the same name on any computer in the network. We called filemaker and they were no help at all. This all started happening when we did the upgrade to Jaguar server.

[stanley]

mgm75:

There shouldn't be a problem with using FMS 5.5 on Jaguar. I have one client who runs that configuration, and it works fine. Make sure you have the latest versions of both FMS and OSX.

First thing I would do is get rid of every FileMaker file on the server, other than the ones being hosted by FM Server. These should all be within the FileMaker Server directory. Turn off file sharing. Users accessing files via file sharing is the cause of most of the file corruption in the FileMaker world.

Reboot the server and make sure that FileMaker Pro is NOT running at the same time as FileMaker server. Now what happens?

-Stanley