GGRRRR all kinds of problems lately

[yafreax]

okay, if you noticed, i posted earlier about extensions not loading. . . just so you know, the following problem is from a different computer. . .

I have a database in which roughly 40 - 50 new records are entered daily. Right now there are 3122 records. . . the system unexpectedly crashed. On startup this file says it may be damaged and needs recovery. Did that and according to the dialog box, everything went smoothly. Well that was a bunch of croc. . . all the records are still there. . . in fact, i can still put them in over the internet. and view them and search, etc. BUT, every layout is blank. If i happen to click where a field is, the field will appear momentarily... i went to layout mode and with the exception of the fields that i made visible by clicking on, everything is greyed out. Similar to when you deny a layout's access from a user.

So, first of all, any hints. . . secondly, is there a quicker way then Filemaker Tech's 2-3 weeks?!?! it's a little more important than that. Oh trust me, i've learned my leasons this week. . . thirdly, someone promise me you will hire me if i'm fired. I can also cook and clean.

Jeremy

[fishma]

When you are instructed to use the recover command, the command should only be used to recover the records,...not the database. The database was damaged. No matter how well the recovery works, the recovered database will never be the same. The recovered database should be discarded as damaged goods. Take the recovered records and import them into a (never before damaged) backup database.

If you do not have a clean backup...well...that's another issue altogether. Rule number one of database administration...Backup! backup! and backup!

Good luck...

Fishma!

[yafreax]

yeah, someone was supposedly backing them up. . . he must've wrote the script wrong ( not FM script ). Luckily i found the original ( i always create the DB's on one computer then copy to another ) so i did just what you mentioned. But your post did put a perspective on things. Guess what, as i was reading your post and writing this one, FM on that machine over there crashed AGAIN!!! and our second biggest database behind the above mentioned was crapped out. Here goes nothing on the recovery. . . ---holding breath---whew it worked correctly...

we've got some serious issues here i better get them settled soon. These databases make us money, lots of it, i can't have this happening.

Jeremy

Signing off an hour early

[fishma]

If you would like, I could look at your files and make some quick suggestions that may improve stability.

Fishma

[yafreax]

well, thanks for the offer. . . but truthfully i don't think it lies with the stability. I truely believe it lies with the computer or how much it is accessed at any given time. As soon as we got closer and closer to the 50 db limit we started having problems. It crashed about once a day. At that time i had just began learning FM and out of the 50 dbs, only about 5 or 6 were mine. . . When we reached the 50 limit i rewrote a lot of scripts to open rarely used databases only when they are needed. This cut us back down to about 25 dbs.

We have around 20 databases that are accessed everyday. About ten of which are heavily accessed. It's my opinion (and i may be wrong) that the problem may occuring when a quite a few are being accessed at the exact same time and they are all trying to run scripts at the same time, etc etc. If this is the case, then it's not the computer. . . i really don't know what to do, but this morning it was down again and yet another file was corrupted. It recovered okay, thankfully.

I even had to write two applescripts when the problem began to escalate. One that checked every 10 min to see if filemaker was still open and if not it restarted the computer and the other open all the necessary dbs on startup. The corruption just started recently.

When i started we only had about 7 dbs that were accessed on a regular basis. . . (it makes me feel good to say that b/c supposedly the guy before me was one of the best in our area, he is just really lazy ).

Jeremy

[fishma]

A few suggestions...

You might want to look at...

HARDWARE

memory on your servers - increase memory

processors on your system - upgrade

add a new server to offload the traffic

SOFTWARE

watch for scripts caught in infinite loops

make sure you are not using a recovered db

check newly added scrits as possible culprits

Just some suggestions... Good luck.

Fishma!

[LiveOak]

With the kind of instablity problems you have been describing, I would take a hard look at the condition of the machines that FM is running on. I'd start by doing reformats, system reloads, and FM reinstalls. Software environment issues such as disk fragmentation can cause problems. Disk drives can (not often) develop subtle failures (had a bad SCSI drive last month causing crashes). We have run 48-50 database files on FM Server 3.0 (Mac) for several years with no problems. I would look beyond FM for these types of problems. -bd

[This message has been edited by LiveOak (edited November 16, 2000).]

[peterlacenne]

Is it possible to use FM server , and is only FMP crash or the OS too , what is the setting pref of FM in terms of saving the change you made (fix time or whenever it is possible) , what is the cahe allowed to FMP ???

[yafreax]

i found the MAIN problem ( probably not the only one ) but we reloaded the whole system. To take care of any system problems. But I still can MAKE it crash and so can anyone that is IMPATIENT...

LET IT BE KNOWN. . .

If you are hosting DB's over the internet without SERVER or a specific Web Server (webstar or whatever ) and it is just being accessed through TCP/IP and a client or user becomes impatient while a script is performing from the web browser and the reject decides to press stop or quit his browser, FM WILL CRASH. Also, more than likely, whichever database is performing the script will become corrupt. We discovered that one of our clients was trying to access and nearly EVERTIME he would become impatient and stop the process and Crash our system. He is a new client, this explains the RECENT problems. The frequent crashes eventually screwed up the system.

HE WHO HAS EARS LET HIM HEAR

. . I don't know if there is any work around, but we are getting server and as mentioned in a newer post, we will use what FM calls a RAIC to try and load-balance our files. So far, we haven't really found much about it yet. I'm going to go read that post now.

Thanks for everything.

Jeremy