FMP Server 5.5 on OS X 10.1

[Moon]

My client is currently running FMP Server 5.5 on a G4 with OS 9.1. FileMaker recommends OS X as the operating system of choice because of its advanced networking and file handling features. I have been running FileMaker Pro 5.5 on my laptop in OS X 10.1.1 with no problems whatsoever.

Nevertheless, before updating the server operating system, I'd like to hear the experiences of anybody who has gone this route. The server will be used virtually exclusively for FM server ( I will leave file sharing turned on, as I keep update software stored there, and occasionally need to access it. However, sharing will not be available to any other user, so I expect any performance hit to be minor.)

I will be installing the OS in the next few days taking advantage of the holiday, and will report back with my own experiences. Still, I would like to hear from anyone who has already taken the step.

Thanks in advance.

Moon

[spragueg]

I had one major issue with Schedules not working at all. If you need to automate you backups I suggest using a shell script . Use "CpMac" tool (on Apple Developer Tools CD) to copy the files while maintaing their creator type. Then resume the databases. Use Cron(Cronix is great tool to help configure cron) to fire off the script whenever you want. I have found this method to be the only way to backup on FM Server 5.5 on OS X. Drop me an email [email protected] if you want more detail. I'll even give you my script if you want it.

Hope this helps

Graham Sprague

[Moon]

Thank you for your offer, Graham. I have resonded privately and accept with gratitude.

To the readers of the Forum, my work with FileMaker Server under OS X is at an end for now. I have reinstalled the OS 9 and its respective version of Server. I encountered problems with Server under OS X that I don't want to live with. Here is the summary:

Backup scripts do not run reliably. Only some of the files backed up when the script ran, and the script ran only sometimes. FileMaker Inc. acknowledges the problem and suggested a solution using Terminal, a perl script, and the unix cron feature, but I was unable to get it to work for me. Not having backups is enough for me to dump OX X for the server quickly, but I encountered other irritations as well.

Several of the files in my solution suddenly would not load under FileMaker server. FileMaker Pro opened the files just fine, but I could not get the server to host them until I had recovered the files.

Restarting the server and checking the preferences often resulted in the prefs going back to default. Sometimes my settings stuck, sometimes they did not. Unreliability here simply meant that I had to check every time I restarted the server, which was frequent when I was trying to resolve the above two other problems.

When the server was running under OS X, neither I nor the clients noticed any improvement to performance. Maybe our user threshold is too low (average 8 connections) for OX X superior file handling advantages to be apparent, but OS 9.x has no disadvantage to our setup.

After wasting several hours in trying to make this horse drink, I decided to revert to OX 9. Now everything works properly with no tweaking. A no-brainer for a busy administrator.

Hey FileMaker, Inc., how about getting this stuff to work right out of the box. And don't make me drop into terminal to create workarounds. I am too old a Mac weinie and way too green in unix to appreciate that kind of advice.