SSO in Ext. Authenication Not working

[jkrier]

SSO/Ext Auth was working perfectly until now. Our .fp7 files were moved from one SAN to another. The FMS Application is running on its own machine. FM Server8 v1 was not touched.

Now when you try to open the Main Menu file, it prompts for Account Name and Password. Ext Auth works fine once you re-enter your window account name and password. Help! My users (42 of them)are used to SSO and automatic FMP access.

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

[Wim Decorte]

What happens if you move the files to the FMS machine? Does the problem go away?

I'm not a big fan of putting the files on a SAN. You'd have to be very sure that the connection from the FMS machine to the SAN is as reliable as the I/O system of the FMS machine itself.

Also typically the folders on the SAN are shared, which is bad for hosted FM files and can lead to corruption in the long run.

[Walter B]

I haven't done this in 7 or 8 yet, so I may just be blowing smoke. But, I do remember in 6 that my solutions often store a relative path to the db files. When using opener files like a main menu file, I would frequently have to go into opener file and reset the relative path to db file if I moved it.

I don't completely agree with Wim's assessment of FM file corruption and Shared folders. I've been running FMS on shared drives for years, and never had a corrupted database file. Not to say you statement is in correct, but, the problem is not with the shared folders themselves. Its with who has access to the them. The corruption problems occur when someone tried access a file that is already open in FMS, or by FMP on another machine. The caveat, I am the only one who has access to the share, and I only use it to move files between the server and my workstation after they have been properly closed or disconnected. I don't think a properly managed SAN shouldn't cause any problems. For what its worth, that my 2 cents. We are moving toward a SAN environment at work, I'll let you know if I have to eat my words. -)

[Wim Decorte]

the problem is not with the shared folders themselves. Its with who has access to the them.

Absolutely true. Who and also "what" accesses it (backup processes, indexing processes,...).

The rule "don't share FMS folders" is too keep it nice and easy. Otherwise you'd need to explain all about permissions, how permissions can propagate down from top-level shares, how to regularly audit what the effective permissions are,...

Rules-of-thumb are by definition simplifications.

[jkrier]

They switched back to the old SAN and now SSO works again! Still don't know why it stopped working. I tried to update the "additional database folder" path to see if that would have any effect-no luck. I don't think FM8 has relative paths. Should I have tried updating the File reference? Thanks anyway for your help.

We've been using a SAN for years. We also have a cluster setup so if one FMS machine fails, we can easily switch to the other. Too bad FM isn't clusterware.. Maybe some day.