pc xDBC Listener Problems on FMS12/13

[CreativeDataPro]

For nearly 8 months, the company I work for has been experiencing very frustrating issues with xDBC Listener on FileMaker Server 12. We migrated to FileMaker Server 13 last week and we're seeing the same issues. 

 

Both FMS12 and FMS13 have been installed on (separate) virtual machines, both running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (Dual-core, 16GB RAM, hosted DBs and backups live on secondary drives). ODBC connections hitting database files hosted on these servers are aborted anywhere from once to four times a day, but not always every day (it may go several days between abortions). The error reported on the server when the ODBC disconnections occur is "xDBC Listener process has terminated abnormally".

 

I have reported this problem to FMI and am in routine contact with their top-level support regarding this issue. They understand how important it is to fix this problem, but after nearly 8 months of troubleshooting with FMI, we are still having the same headaches.

 

I'm just wondering, am I the only one experiencing issues with xDBC Listener? I've searched the forum and found a few older posts semi-related, so I apologize if this is a duplicate post in any way.

 

Here's a screenshot of the xDBC Listener's affect on processor performance:

What you don't see in the image is the CPU consumption for the listener alone is 55%. Once the ODBC connections drop off, CPU usage drops off to a normal state (<30% total).

 

My suspicion is that xDBC Listener.exe is simply the problem child of the FMS software. It's either the Listener, or possibly the ODBC driver that's at the root of the problem. Either way, I'm hoping this will be resolved soon. Without a reliable way for external systems to access data, it's hard to argue in favor of the FIleMaker platform is a viable enterprise-level solution for data management.

[sunraybrad]

Hi, this is nearly a year after your post, but just wanted you to know that we have been fighting a similar issue with the ODBC_Listener for some time now. In our case, the ODBC_Listener is simply not loading upon FileMaker Server startup. We have to invoke the fmxdbc_listener.exe manually. We are looking into firing up a scheduled task upon restart to run the exe upon detection of a particular related event happening when FM Server starts - what a work around!

 

I was hoping that an upgrade to version 13 Server would solve this for us but your post confirms it probably wont.

 

Did you ever find a solution to your issue?

 

Thanks.

[Wim Decorte]

Not a solution but instead of trying to interact with the exe, have you tried using the FMS CLI instead:

 

fmsadmin start xdbc

 

(or restart)

[cbishop]

Yes, we've been using a task schedule with "fmsadmin start xdbc" that runs every 15 minutes, and it does indeed keep it online.  We also run "fmsadmin restart xdbc" nightly just to flush out any memory leaks from its Java processes.