Mac - Windows compatibilty

[ElDiablo]

Hello everyone...

We have here a server running with Mac OS X, on which FileMaker Server Advanced 7 is installed.

Our database is protected with authentication (thanks to FileMaker accounts), and is backuped daily on a DVD.

Friday, we got problems with our server (the midpane had been replaced since), so we naturally wished to use our last backup on another computer, running on Windows XP (we don't have another Mac computer). We had then the quite bad surprise to notice that we couldn't open our backups under Windows : FileMaker recognise well that's a FileMaker file, but rejects all passwords, from the simplest (an empty password, for a read-only access) to the most complicated !

Now our server is back among us, we wish to set more reliable backup up : without the data which will be stored in this (currently developed) database, our society can't function correctly.

Of course, not only data must be backuped, we also want to backups our models and scripts !

Does anybody has already met this case ? How did he solved it ?

[Vaughan]

It's most probably permissions related.

First check that the files are not "locked" which happens a lot when copying from read-only media unver Windows.

Second check that the files have the appropriate owner, user and group privileges.

[ElDiablo]

That was the first thing I checked...

The file has not the read-only flag, and is stored on a FAT32 drive, so no permissions can be defined.

[dkemme]

How do you backup to the DVD? Are copying files that are being served or files that were created with FMS backup scripts? If you are burning live files to the DVD, at best these files will not be readable, at worst the live files could become corrupted.

My backup strategy is to have FMS backup every hour or so to a different folder. Copy those folders to a removeable drive to take home each day. Have a few different removeable drives leaving you with days of files to go back upon. Burn one of the folders to a DVD for permament storage with some frequency. Burn clones of files after each modification if all else fails to import the data back into.

[ElDiablo]

I tried both copying files that are NOT served (stopping the server, out of office hours) or by file created with a FMS backup script.

In both cases, I can open the file on the Mac, but it's impossible to pass authentication on the Windows...

Backup is only done daily for my own, as my database is currently doing 3 Go.

Regards,

ElDiablo

[Walter B]

If the solution was built on a Mac, it may not have an appropriate extention attached to it. When you try to open it in XP, do you see a .fp7 at the end of file name? If not, try adding that and reopening.

hope this helps

[ElDiablo]

The appropriate extension is well attached. As I said, FP recognises well my file as a FP7 file, it's only authentication which fails...

[Ersen Kavak]

It might be because of a unicode character problem, which I have been facing in Mac-Winwods most of the time..

If the username or pwd contains a non English character for instance...

best