I installed FM Server 9 on an OS X Server. It was creating some very strange display errors that left the cursor unusable, so today I performed an official uninstall of FMA Server and reinstalled it. When I click on the Admin Console icon, I get

"the database server is not available. to edit server deployment, please start the database server first."

Then I click 'restart' and I get:

"Unable to start the database server. please contact administrator for assistance."

I have no idea where to go from here.

What do the event logs say? It should log something when it's trying to start FMS...

It says that another copy of filemaker server is running with this installation code.

well, i performed the uninstall of the first version that was installed and not acting properly. if filemaker's official uninstall isn't good enough for it, what is?

I uninstalled FM Server and I also deleted the FM Server folder. This still resulted in the same 508 error of it thinking there are two versions of FMS installed. So in the Workgroup Manager and the Server Admin I deleted any mention of filemaker and i uninstalled and resinstalled again. I got this error message:

The Database server is unavailable. To edit server deployment, please start the database server first.

which is generated after the 508 error in the eventlog file.

I can't think of any reason why it thinks there's another copy running.

I just realized that perhaps the 'other copy' of FMS are the copies that TimeMachine was putting into the Iomega HD that's attached to it. Of course there are many of those copies, and OS X tells me that i can't delete timemachine backups. Suggestions?

I turned off Time Machine and disconnected the Iomega drive and it still thinks there is more than one copies of FMS. i'm out of ideas on why it thinks this.

The error message is saying that another machine on your network has FMS running with that install code; not that the current computer already has FMS installed.

Open a copy of FMP client and look for the FM servers in the Open Remote dialog. From that you can work out the IP number of the machine that it's installed on.

I'd advise you not to be using Time Machine in conjunction with FileMaker Server backups.

Steven

Thank you. Are you saying that i shouldn't have TM backup the FMS DB backups, or are you saying to leave TM out of the FMS Folder?

*Nothing* should be touching the live hosts FMP databases (except FM Server). Disable all virus scanners, disk indexing, backup programs including Time machine.

The way to backup hosted FMP databases is to create schedules in FM Server to regularly backup the files. Point the backup program at the folder that FM Server creates the backups in and let it do its thing to that.

In the case of Time Machine, add the folder that FM Server stores the live files to its "exclude" list.

Are you saying that i shouldn't have TM backup the FMS DB backups

Yes. Copy those backups to some other locale. Then you can use whatever system you like to back them up to some enterprise system.

Steven