FMS 7 External (local OS users) Authentication

[timtimmy]

Under Security I have Client Authentication set to FileMaker and External Server accounts. In the old version of FMS 7 there was an option for local or domain authentication, it's gone. I want local authentication, as this server is also our email/file server and has all the users we need that need access to the database. This server cannot be an LDAP/AD server because it's in a department network, and the admins don't want us messing up their network.

Consider the user bob who's OS level user has been defined on the same server running FMS. His group is staff. When I set up the databases accounts, specifically an external account with group set to staff, bob is not able to access the database. He gets the error "Your access priveleges do not allow you to perform this action.". Why isn't this working? :'(

[Wim Decorte]

Nothing to do with authentication but: you seriously shouldn't be using your file/mail server as your FMS. That's asking for trouble. FMS7's new cache flush mechanism and the file/email tasks will constantly fight for hard disk access. And you don't want to take FMS down if something happens to the other apps.

As to the configuration for authentication: FMS on OSX will always look at the local accounts first. If it can't find a matching account there it will go to the next authentication node configured in the "Directory Access" app (in your utilities folder).

[timtimmy]

This isn't a very large workgroup. It's only 10 people, so this server serves a lot of functions (and is actually under-utilized). Our databases are also small enough that they can all fit in cache (it's just geochemical data).

Yes, authentication. This is how I figured FMS was doing things. So there must be something wrong somewhere in my configuration I was hoping there was a bug somewhere that I could blame this on.

[dcsweigert]

Hi,

I am new to this forum but thought I'd post my info as well.

I have FM7 Server Adv on OSX Server 10.3.8. Server is 'bound' to the network and I can walk LDAP and AD fine. I called FileMaker support and spoke with a tech. We looked at all the settings in the DIRECTORY SERVICE portion of the CONFIGURATION tab. All was good but still did not work. Then the tech finally revealed that 'they at FileMaker' have not been able to make this work.

Has anyone been able to get FM7 Server on OSX to authenticate using LDAP?

[dkemme]

I agree, do not run anything else on the machine that has FMS, you are asking and will likely receive problems that are not worth trying to completely utilize a machine.

[mberding]

I'm not using LDAP, but I do have FM Server Advanced 7v3 with OS X Server 10.3.8, and I have FMSA 7 using the server's users accounts. Although I did have difficulty in setting it up, I did finally figure out a key difference needed in "password types" that allowed everything to start working.

When editing a user account (in the Workgroup Manager) under the "Advanced" tab, change the "User Password Type" to Open Directory.

Once I did that for each user, everything started working like I thought it should.

[mberding]

I'm not using LDAP, but I do have FM Server Advanced 7v3 with OS X Server 10.3.8, and I have FMSA 7 using the server's users accounts. Although I did have difficulty in setting it up, I did finally figure out a key difference needed in "password types" that allowed everything to start working.

When editing a user account (in the Workgroup Manager) under the "Advanced" tab, change the "User Password Type" to Open Directory.

Once I did that for each user, everything started working like I thought it should.

[mberding]

I'm not using LDAP, but I do have FM Server Advanced 7v3 with OS X Server 10.3.8, and I have FMSA 7 using the server's users accounts. Although I did have difficulty in setting it up, I did finally figure out a key difference needed in "password types" that allowed everything to start working.

When editing a user account (in the Workgroup Manager) under the "Advanced" tab, change the "User Password Type" to Open Directory.

Once I did that for each user, everything started working like I thought it should.