Sudden Failure

[mikemccloskey]

I have been hosting a FM server 5.5 on my Mac (10.4.9) for some time. All of a sudden, no networked computers can access the shared files. They simply do not show up in Open Remote > Local Hosts.

Any ideas as to what may be going on? I have trashed 5.5 and re-installed it. No help.

Thanks

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Bad hardware? Bad NIC card? Bad router/switches? Lots of stuff could be happening here.

Steven

[Ender]

Any idea what changed?

Does the Server Admin show everything as normal? Does the event.log show anything? Is the FileMaker port open on the firewall (port 5003)?

[Ender]

Bad hardware? Bad NIC card? Bad router/switches? Lots of stuff could be happening here.

Steven

Good point.

Do other network apps work on the computer? Does the Network Utility show any errors?

[mikemccloskey]

I don't think there are any hardware problems. Port 5003 is open. other network utilities are working fine.

I have noticed that when I attempt to stop the server it says, "FileMaker Server is stopping . . . this may take a few minutes". It gets stuck there and I must force quit.

Nothing odd seems to show up in the event log.

[Genx]

Yeh i always get that even on fresh installs.

Anyway, try adding your host as a favourite host.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Moreover, an application as old as Server 5.5 was never fesigned to run on an OS such as 10.9.

Upgrade to Server 8?

Steven

[Genx]

Actually, thats a really weird thing... I can never seem to get FMS or FMSA to shut down gracefully unless the Server itself shuts down (nothing ever turns up in the logs, the shut down is always graceful). I always close the files down first if i have to close down FMS for some reason..

On different installs, different machines, all above minimum requirements... Though i'll admit they're not dedicated as they should be i've tried on a dedicated machine and it still don't shut down properly...

[mikemccloskey]

I can upgrade but I am concerned about using server 8 on a non-dedicated machine. How have other's fared with this?

[Ender]

Any version of Server should run on a dedicated machine.

[Genx]

Any version of Server should run on a dedicated machine.

This is very true.. but at the same time... I fare quite well when FMS is installed on a non-dedicated machine, i.e. a File Server, Exchange Server etc. Don't really see why FM should get its own machine when SQL doesn't lol.

But no, the performance I get is decent, but if I go above 15 clients, I use pretty much enforce a dedicated machine.

Please note, that as much as I have told my clients the issues they'd experience with having it on the same server, most seem to think that the performance is great nonetheless -- thats their issue not mine.

Anyway, idea is: It will work fine for a small amount of clients with a small amount of transactions, but if you want high client / high volume on a non-dedicated server, lol, well it might die :.

[Ender]

I'll stick with my "dedicated machine" recommendation. But I'd also suggest reading knowledge base article #5874 on filemaker.com for a good description of their recommendations for optimizing performance.

[mikemccloskey]

I may be getting somewhere. I reinstalled a new system on my server machine and FMServer 5.5 worked great. Then I went through software update and updated my system. Now I am back to not working. Not only that but when I open a file with FM 6 on the server machine, I cannot open it from a remote machine, it doesn't see it. Could it be that some update to OSX is troubling server 5.5 and FMP 6?

[Vaughan]

Is an update causing the firewall to close a port FMS uses?

Why not install the OS, then the patches, THEN install FMS. In that order.

[Ender]

Could it be that some update to OSX is troubling server 5.5 and FMP 6?

Could be. Apple keeps adding security updates to fix some security hole or another. You might just stick with a stable OS version. 10.3.9 was good, and was known to work with Server 5.5. What's the hardware this is installed on?

Also make sure you update to 5.5v4 (leave the FileMaker Server 5.5 folder on the root directory until the update is done).

[mikemccloskey]

Vaughn, when you say "the patches", do you mean the updates?

How would I figure out if the update is causing the firewall to close a port?

The machine is a single core MacMini

I might go back to a previous version of OSX and ignore the security updtaes.

Edited May 22, 2007 by Guest

[Ender]

The machine is a single core MacMini

This would be a problem. OS X Intel processor support was not added until Server 8v4.

[mikemccloskey]

It may not have been supported, but I had no problem till the last security update.

[mikemccloskey]

I reinstalled OS 10.4.2 again from my original discs and it FM Server worked fine. I believe the problem to be a security update installed on the second round of updates. I chose this time not to install it and all seems well.

[Nick Robins]

I see the identical problem. I was hoping not to downrev the server. However, Apple support told me there is no way to uninstall an upgrade. I may try to install QT 7.1.5 and Airport 2007002 before I give up and reinstall the system. I'll let you know what I find

Since my Mac OSX Server 10.4.9 did a software update for QuickTime to 7.1.6 and to Airport Extreme to 2007003, when I start FM Server 5.5, it appears to load. But, when a client goes to look for a remote database to open (and it can't see any), the fmserverd process begins taking up "300%" of the CPU time (the Xserve has 2 dual core processors so this is really 75%). The wayward process never exits when running fmserverd STOP. I can only stop it with a Force Quit (kill -9).

I have tried reinstalling FMServer 5.5 and loading a minimal database. Nothing seems to work.

[Mac jOS X]

I experience the same problem after upgrading to Mac OS X Server 10.4.10.. ( FMS 5.5.4 ). Reinstall etc. does not help.

[ShosMeister]

Just to confirm what everyone else is saying:

It is the 10.4.10 update and the associated security patches. I have a client that had the same issue and I restored back to 10.4.9 and all is fine - except, as noted, the server does not alway shut down.

I turned of the updates until we can get him upgraded to FM9. Not looking forward to that!

[LaRetta]

I don't know about Mac, but with Windows, I NEVER activate the auto-update feature because it never fails that they cause major problems and sometimes even crash FMS. I manually run them on server when I can test it thoroughly and I usually wait until many people have ran it and I don't hear horror stories about the results.

LaRetta :wink2: