WebDirect stability

[wimclaessen]

The FileMaker Web Publishing Engine seems to be not the most stable of technologies.  I noticed though that the WebDirect service in FMS14 goes down a lot causing the operators to restart it more than once a day.

Does anyone else have experiences with webdirect crashing?

[BrentHedden]

Our production FM13 server has been running WebDirect very steadily for the past year.  I can't recall a time when we had to restart the server or service because of WD.  We're still testing v14, so I can't offer any kind of help with the new version yet.

 

It would be very helpful if you were to define what exactly is crashing and what the operators are doing to restart it?  Sometimes looking at the FMS and OS logs around the time of the 'crash' is very handy in diagnosis.

[Wim Decorte]

The FileMaker Web Publishing Engine seems to be not the most stable of technologies.  I noticed though that the WebDirect service in FMS14 goes down a lot causing the operators to restart it more than once a day.

Does anyone else have experiences with webdirect crashing?

What OS and what hardware?  What kind of load?​

Echoing what Brent is asking: what do the logs say exactly?

 

 

[wimclaessen]

I'm sorry Wim, i can't answer these questions, as i am using a hosting service on a shared server. I do not have access to the server itself. I might have to consider hiring my own dedicated server.

[_ian]

I agree with Brent, we've been running WebDirect for about a year now and it's been absolutely rock solid. Slow, but rock solid. 

If it was my files sitting on a server that was being restarted every day, I'd be asking some questions of the hosting company. 

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Absolutely!  There sounds as if there is something very out of order with the hosting server.

 

Steven

[John May - Point In Space]

That's why we don't host WebDirect on our shared servers.  It really needs its own server for proper stability and speed.

- John

[mrdambro]

I've noticed that FM Server 14 freezes about once a day. The symptom is simply the message "Loading..." when people try to connect with a browser. The cure is to stop FM server and Web Publishing Engine, then restart both. I've also noticed that if you stop then restart Server/Web Publishing Engine before a freeze everything goes along without a hitch. Any ideas on how to not have to stop/start Server everyday?

[David_LasVegas]

I suffered the same problem as reported above. Endless spinning wheel for many WebDirect users so they wouldn't be able to access the FM server login page, and the server crashing several times a day.
For the users that didn't have issues they reported a much better performance in FMS14 than  with the same solution running on FMS13. BTW  these users without problems used random browsers , OS, java versions, no obvious pattern to which  configuration work and which didn't.

After a miserable week of talking to Filemaker, re-deploying and re-installing FMS14, reinstalling the OS Yosemite from scratch in a dedicated Mac Pro , rolling back the OS to Mavericks, re-installing, re-deploying and trying all possible combinations installing all software from 0.  I had to give up and roll back everything to FMS 13. It is extremely frustrating.

My new line of attack is going to be to install everything in a WIn Server box and maybe, hopefully, that will take care of the problem. I would like to get something equivalent in power to what I have now which is a Mac Pro 2 x 3.5 Ghz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 with 64 GB of RAM. Any recommendation on what kind of server could be a good substitute, any particular models, brands?
Anyone any comments comparing Mac to Win for Server, I have heard that Win offers better performance, and hopefully more stability.

Thanks!

Edited June 30, 2015 by David_LasVegas
Clarification

[fabriceN]

Just to report the exact same issue.

WebDirect stops working every 65 or 70 minutes (without) any scheduled task on the server with this frequency.

OS X 10.9. The same machine (with the same OS) has been running WD with FMS 13 for over a year without a problem. -> We're downgrading to FMS 13.

Note that all other services (including Custom Web Publishing, Admin Console and ODBC) keep working smoothly. It's a WebDirect only issue.

Edited July 26, 2015 by fabriceN

[DaMayan]

Crashing that often sounds more like a configuration conflict. OSX can do strange stuff without telling you, especially with the server.app. It sometimes tries to "fix" itself and will overwrite settings, configs or hooks made by FileMaker. Have you tried a fresh install of OS X and FileMaker Server (using the recommended steps)?

There IS a pretty serious webdirect bug that causes the login screen to not appear, but that seems like something different to me.

Edited July 28, 2015 by DaMayan

[fabriceN]

hurray!

I reinstalled OS X and FMS... for no good.

But... got a little bit of help from FMI support and they asked me to test with the Database filter option off (in the Security panel of the admin console) and... it solved it.

Now of course it's not a real fix because I need this option to be on, but let's hope that the issue will be nailed down in a future release.
Please reply to this post if it solves it for you too. (or if it doesn't by the way)

[Allen Poole]

What log information is useful for troubleshooting WebDirect crashes? My client's FMS 16 running on Windows is rock solid for FMP clients but its WebDirect process crashes occasionally, sometimes not for weeks and other times more often than daily, with a load of c. 20 occasional users.

Sometimes a Windows log report like this

Error    04/29/2019  8:31:13 AM    FileMaker Server 16    701    Web Publishing Engine process has terminated abnormally.

Error    10/29/2019 10:12:31 AM    Application Error    1000    (100)
    Faulting application name: fmscwpc.exe, version: 16.0.5.501, time stamp: 0x5cdee983
    Faulting module name: FMEngine.dll, version: 16.0.5.47008, time stamp: 0x5cdee806
    Exception code: 0xc0000005
    Fault offset: 0x0000000000040594
    Faulting process id: 0x1260
    Faulting application start time: 0x01d5800f16d9068f
    Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\FileMaker\FileMaker Server\Web Publishing\publishing-engine\cwpc\fmscwpc.exe
    Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\FileMaker\FileMaker Server\Web Publishing\publishing-engine\cwpc\FMEngine.dll
    Report Id: 98290031-3fe3-487c-b781-de36fdd6182b
    Faulting package full name: 
    Faulting package-relative application ID:

acknowledges the crash, but not always.

FMS' log is similarly unhelpful:

Tue Oct 29 10:12:31 EDT 2019	Server Events	Error	Web Publishing Engine process has terminated abnormally.

I've asked my users to let me know what actions they take immediately prior to crashes, but they're not effective in providing this kind of detail. What tools and techniques do y'all recommend for ferreting out the cause(s) of WebDirect crashing?