Server 7 Adv and Web Pub Admin Console - help!

[KublaMan]

Yikes! I'm about eight hours into the install of FM7 Advanced and am still having problems.

Here's the short question: Why aren't my published databases showing in the "FileMaker Server Web Publishing Administration Console?" The longer explanation of the question follows.

Overview: XServe running OS X server 10.3.7 -- FM7 Server Advanced installed (OK) -- attempting to connect to Lasso.

After two hours on the phone with Lasso Tech, trying to figure out why Lasso couldn't see the published databases from FM7SA -- the most likely culprit seems to be showing itself in the "FileMaker Server Web Publishing Administration Console."

This console is the web based interface that is accessed through the FM7SA Admin application>Configure>Clients and "Open" when selecting one of the Web Publishing Engines (I only have one.)

When I log into the console... everything seems to be configured properly. Instant Web publishing is on, as are XML and XSLT. But when I click ont he "Filemaker Database" link at the bottom of the page and then click on the "Published Databases" -- none of the databases appear.

And yet... the databases are being published via instant web publishing -- as I've confirmed that I can see and open them on the web.

If I were only doing IWP -- then I wouldn't care about what's (not) appearing in the web console. But since Lasso doens't seem to see any published databases with which to connect to... and since Filemaker's own web-based console doesn't seem to indicate that any of the databases are being published, there seems to be some disconnect between Filemaker and the Web publishing engine.

A few other notes:

All files have fmsadmin priveledges set to read/write

Extended priveledges include fmxml

I have spent nearly 4 hours on the phone with FM tech support also. While, at first, they pointed out that they weren't responsible for connecting to Lasso, they were baffled as to why their own product (the web based console) wasn't showing the databases in the "Published Databases" section. They've escalated it to the next level... though I'm dubious if they'll be any more successful.

Any ideas are welcome. Right now... the entire project (and a rather large investment in an Xserve and in FMSA) are waiting to figure this problem out. Thanks.

[Larry Schroeder]

I had a similar problem with IWP during an install and could not see the databases in the counsole window but they were being served out to the web with IWP.

My solution was not nice. I started over and uninstalled all and reinstalled including updates and OS. It was important on the windows world not to set any passwords until both the initial setup was running and then the updates were loaded and running.

Maybe better news. I had been reviewing the developer tech and support site at filemaker.com and one of the updates for fms7 seemed to speek to the problem you are having on OSX in the descriptions of the update changes. (again not very helpful, since I looked at tons of items this morning and can't really aim you at the precise one)

Anyhow my simpathys are with you. I spent about 2 weeks installing Windoze PC OSes and FMS 7 Advance probably 6 times and the problem was a bad stick of ram (the 2nd 128mb stick) so when I really got everything loaded and optimised the disk it would really fix it goooood and the next boot would be the blue screen of death.

The machine had the ram checks off to speed up the startup. Not the bad ram is hanging on my wall as a reminder to me if I am having problems check the ram.

[KublaMan]

Thanks Larry for your reply.

FM Support got back to me after they "elevated" me to a higher level of support.

The result of getting "elevated" was to get a message on my machine that said: "Your problem is a known issue. We have no fix. However, if you re-install the program... sometimes that fixes it."

Well... I wondered if this became a "know issue" after they'd spent four hours trying to figure out the problem. (If it really was known, seems they should have just said so and saved us all a bunch of time.)

Nonetheless... I'm going to try re-installing and see what happens.

Thanks again.

[KublaMan]

Well, here's a dissappointing follow up:

Just spent another 2.5 hours uninstalling... then re-installing Filemaker Server.

With no luck -- or changes -- whatsoever. I religiously followed another posting's suggested order of installation to no avail.

At this point, I'm at my wits end... and am now having to seriously re-consider my investment in Filemaker products moving forward. I mean really... I can't even get it running... I can only imagine what problems I might have when I'm actually trying to get pages to interact with the server.

I could easily go back to serving up databases on my OS9 G3 using the basic web publishing tools... and at this point... get more reliability than I'm getting having invested thousands of dollars on an Xserve/FM7 Server advanced.

Of course... I intend to contact FM support again.

(From the postings I've seen here... I'm certainly not the only one with this problem.)

[armeen]

we have just recently purched FM Server Advance and were thinking to purchase Lasso too. good to know that there is a bug. in that case i will put a hold on the purchase and wait and see what answeres we'll get on this form.

KublaMan thanks your post.

[jeffer]

The biggest problem with all the installation issues on MacOS X, seems to be the tomcat and jbos error. It took me a while to discover this bug. The jboss and tomcat engines are responsible for the communication between the sxl files and the filemaker databases, hosted by the filemaker web engine. When updating to java 1.4.2, the opening command in the plist file of the jboss engine is not valid anymore and this needs to be fixed. Apple has a till document that explains the workaround to fix this issue. Notice that it is very important that you install the MacOS X developer tools from the Panther cd package. When you don't do this, the jBoss and Tomcat java archives are not available on the system!

Let's hope that this hookes you guys up!

greetz,

Jeffrey