Schedule Weekly Restarts

[Dana G]

I need to know how to configure FileMaker Server 7 to shutdown and restart on a weekly schedule. I'm guessing we will have to create a script to do this but I don't know where or how to start. I'm not IT so if you need to you can dumb it down a little. If not we have an IT guy in-house that I can involve.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

You can probably do this with OS level scripting, but let's wait for Wim to give the exact methodology. I can tell you this, however:

[color:red]It is absolutely vital that all the files first be closed and then the service stopped before doing the restart. Otherwise you will likely toast the files.

Steven

[Dana G]

Noted! Thanks. I look forward to additional info.

[Wim Decorte]

Are we talking about just restarting the FMS service or the whole machine?

For just FMS you'd use VBscript together with the FMS command line to close the files, and then stop the service.

Automating rebooting the machine is a lot more involved if you want to script it. The first part of that process would be to close the hosted files like Steven says. This is pretty heavy duty OS scripting here, and it may be beyond your reach if you've never done something like this before...

[Dana G]

Wim,

Let me get with our IT director to see which way he is planning on going. I'm assuming that it will just be a restart of the service and not a total reboot of the server. I'll get back to you once I speak with him.

Thanks again for taking the time to work with me on this.

[xochi]

Why do you want to restart the machine weekly? A properly configured server should be able to stay running 24/7/365 with no restarts necessary.

If you are wanting to do doing weekly restarts, is it to work around some other bug / problem that really should be fixed?

[Dana G]

Wim, We are just planning on restarting the service. Any help you could lend would be much appreciated.

As for why we want to restart them...

We have two computers in the office that suffer from excessive blinking when the users try to work in FileMaker. We have tried re-installing the program, restarting their computers, etc. The only thing that seems to help them is to have the files closed and restarted. We can't figure out why they are the only ones that are having this problem. I have contacted FileMaker directly but they haven't been able to help.

Another reason is that I can't take the files down to work on them. We rely too heavily on FileMaker. That means that I add and change a lot of fields, layouts, buttons, etc. Doing this while the file is running causes them to load wierd. Like the buttons that were created when we converted all load together but the ones I have added since then load slower. When we restart the files it gets everything back on the same page and it all loads up at the same time when the file is opened.

[Wim Decorte]

Dana: have you checked that it's enough to close the files and open them again or does it really require a service restart?

[Wim Decorte]

In theory, yes. But any machine (any OS) that is under heave load needs to be restarted once in a while (month, quarter,...). It frees up resources used by services but not properly released. Not by the fault of the OS but by fault of whatever is running on it.

[Dana G]

Wim,

No we haven't tested the difference in just closing the files. I just figured that if we were going to close the files, it would be a safe measure to go ahead and restart the service as well.

The server does get manually restarted about every two months for some reason or another. I'm trying to set up a schedule of sorts so that I can remind our IT director and make sure he stays on top of it.

[Wim Decorte]

Here's the approach that needs to be programmed, Dana:

- ask FMS for a list of all hosted files

- issue a close command to each file individually.

- after closing a file, ask FMS for a new list and loop until you get a list that doesn't list the file you just closed

- (ideally you'd also query the event log for confirmation that the file was closed properly and to watch for any FMS errors or warnings)

- after all files are closed, issue a stop command to the FMS server service

- after a certain amount of time, tell the OS to start the service again (FMS itself does not have a start command)

- monitor the OS event log for any errors and warnings.

As you can see, it's pretty involved OS-level scripting. There will be FMS video tutorial released in the near future that features a VBscript with most of this approach.

[Dana G]

Sorry for the slow response...I've been out sick.

I will see if we can get this to work. I appreciate your time in helping me with this.