SuperContainer Eating Up All Hard Drive Space in my Server

[jrie818]

I was running a script that goes through all the records and transfer the contents of a container field into SuperContainer. Everything seems to be working fine until the server hard drive ran out of space. The script calls that if the transfer is successful, it would delete the contents of the container. But that didn't stop the hard drive space from depleting.

So I bought an external drive, transferred SuperContainer files there, and still my server hard drive space keeps on going down.

Can someone tell me how to fix this?

[Sydney Shackelford]

If you are running Windows Server, make sure Shadow Copy is turned off. That could be eating up your hard drive space.

-Scott

[jrie818]

If you are running Windows Server, make sure Shadow Copy is turned off. That could be eating up your hard drive space.

-Scott

I apologize for not giving out much information.

Here's my setup...

Mac Server running 10.5 Leopard

FileMaker Server Advanced 11 running 2 databases.

The primary database contains the main database and the secondary database contains all the files (in the container).

Bought SuperContainer and started transferring the files from the second database into SuperContainer.

In the middle of the transfer process, I suddenly ran out of space in the local drive.

Bought an external hard drive and moved the SuperContainer data into it and continued transferring.

In the middle of the transfer process, I suddenly ran out of space again in the local drive.

Why?

There are 3 things that I noticed while doing the transferring...

1. The second database that contains the files DOES NOT instantly reduce it's size even after the script removed the contents of the container field.

2. Inside the cwpe_tomcat/temp folder, a file shows up called "upload....tmp" while the script is in the process of uploading the contents of the container field into the SuperContainer. And then disappears when the upload is done. However,

3. I noticed that the size of the local hard drive continues to deplete even though that file is getting deleted. But where does it go?

The Trash is empty so there's nothing to erase. Tried to use the SCClearLocalCache on the client machine that is running the script, every time it does the transfer but I think that only affects the local hard drive of the client machine and not the server. And so I installed a schedule script on the server to run the SCClearLocalCache but still nothing happened.

What do you think is happening?

Thanks

[Sydney Shackelford]

The FileMaker file is NOT going to instantly shrink when you remove the data from from the container fields, especially in server.

With you hard drive low on space, make sure you backup first otherwise it's possible for corruption to occur if the hard drive gets full.

After you remove the data, move the file off server and onto FileMaker directly. (Can be on same machine/hard drive, just don't have a file open the same time FileMaker Server does.) Do a "Save a Copy as.." and select "compact", and the file size will go down. (Since you are low on hard drive space, choose a different drive.) Then move the file back to server after remove the large original file.

-Scott

[jrie818]

The FileMaker file is NOT going to instantly shrink when you remove the data from from the container fields, especially in server.

With you hard drive low on space, make sure you backup first otherwise it's possible for corruption to occur if the hard drive gets full.

After you remove the data, move the file off server and onto FileMaker directly. (Can be on same machine/hard drive, just don't have a file open the same time FileMaker Server does.) Do a "Save a Copy as.." and select "compact", and the file size will go down. (Since you are low on hard drive space, choose a different drive.) Then move the file back to server after remove the large original file.

-Scott

Understood. Thank you.

My main concern really is why does my server hard drive continues to deplete when I'm just moving files from a container (in the 2nd database) into my SuperContainer (located in an external drive)? I don't really care much if my 2nd database remain the same size after moving all the files. I will take it off the server anyway after the transfer has been completed.

If there's a temporary folder somewhere or a cache file that I can clear to regain the hard drive space I lost during the transfer, that would be awesome.

[Sydney Shackelford]

The Super Container Companion plugin is probably writing the contents of the container to a temporary file in a temp path before uploading to the Super Container server, but I don't think it's the same directory as Get(TemporaryPath) in FileMaker. You get the path and check and see. Normally this gets cleared every now and then by the OS. There is a utility called Onyx for OSX (it's free) that will clean up temp and log files. (It can do other cool things like change hidden setting in the OS, Finder and certain Apps, just be careful what you change.)

Another option is to move the container file to the other Hard Drive ( I assume it is bigger ) and point to it either from Server or open a FileMaker client on the server and point to the Data file on the server and the non-shared Container file on the servers 2nd Hard Drive. It will probably transfer faster that way too.

-Scott

[jrie818]

Thank you. Like I said before I see a file that shows up in the cwpe_tomcat/temp while the file is uploading into SuperContainer and then disappears when the transfer is done. I read about those utility and I might try it if there's absolutely no way to get rid of this temporary files automatically. Be careful. Got it.

I thought about that before but it would complicate things because there's really nothing inside that 2nd database except for 1 table with that container field. All scripts, relationships, security, validation happens in the Main database and the Main controls this 2nd database. If I move it, I would lose control over it and all the script that I made to point things into the right path would all be screwed up. Of course, if I only have 1 database this would be the easiest way of doing it.

Thank you so much, I appreciate it.