Intermittent 500 and 503 errors

[GuyLunsford]

I am running FileMaker Server 12 Advanced (12.0.4.405) on a MacMini. It is hosting 6 databases (7 if you count the sample) that are all used as sources for the PHP api. The web server is running on an OpenSUSE LAMP stack and has a special site that just checks for the existence of and connection to the six databases. Everything runs smoothly and the databases serve up news, store, and jobs databases while the special site is checked by an outside service every five min to look for errors (when it will email me).

 

Between once a week and once a month, all the sites will lose connection to the database for something between 1 and 3 hours. If I don't get to it in time it will regain connection like nothing had happened. If I do make it in time, the only thing I have been able to do to either machine to get it working again is the far-too-drastic step of rebooting the MacMini. Log checking shows that FileMaker thinks everything was fine the entire time, made its backups and has no idea there was a problem.

 

Adding lots of logging and checking everything I can think of I am getting a "FileMaker error 22 - The requested URL returned error: 500 Internal Server Error"  or a "FileMaker error 22 - The requested URL returned error: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable" on each of the six databases. I hadn't been checking the Sample one but i will next time.

 

These usually happen when nobody is connected with the FileMaker client (after hours, weekends) and at generally lower traffic times.

 

The times I have connected the Admin console shows all of the databases up and open, the Web Publishing Service active, a normal 30-40 Clients connected.

 

Apache and system logs show no errors or unusual traffic at this time. I have tried restarting Apache, networking, and the one functional interface (on board Ethernet) to no avail.

 

I need to know what is causing the issue or what I can do to log the cause.

 

Any help would be appreciated, info on request

 

Guy

[ggt667]

error remedy

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500 sudo /etc/init.d/apache restart

503 turn WPE off, count to 10, start WPE

802 kick all users, backup the databases, close all databases, close FileMaker server, relaunch

---

 

This said have you considered all your layouts used by the XML RPC interface?

 

Are there any calculations, related records on the layouts in question? Very often it's better to do n queries to avoid having layouts addressing such stuff as calculations, related records. FileMaker allows you to make stupid design patterns; that combines data and business logic, this is not always beneficial, even though most likely it is for drafting solutions, yet in production it may take your entire solution down.

 

6 databases is nothing, if done right, you can host 100, if done wrong 1 will suffice.