Admin Server Console - Connection Refused Error

[Andrew Nicolay]

I'm helping a client who has an old install of Filemaker Server Advanced 11 running on a Mac Mini.

It's been running Filemaker v11.5 for about 2 year without any issue... All of a sudden today, it stopped working!

I checked to see if there were any updates installed from apple or java... NONE!

I completely uninstalled Filemaker Server and reinstalled v11.5 and applied the java fix... still won't start.

Just for laughs I installed v11.2, that installed fine, up and running no problem, as soon as I restart the Mac Mini, everything takes a dump.  When I go to localhost:16000 or serverip:16000 in the browser, nothing happens, as if filemaker server was never even installed.  If I double click the applet icon, it says "Unable to launch the application - Connection Refused".

Any thoughts?

[Wim Decorte]

when you do "fmsadmin list files -s", it still shows the files as being open and hosted though, correct?

meaning that FMS is in fact up and running but just not the admin console.

[Andrew Nicolay]

This is a clean install as of right now, there are no files hosted since I can't even get the admin console to open and walk through setup.  When I open Activity Monitor, there is not a single filemaker service running.

[Wim Decorte]

So you don't even get to the deployment wizard?

What if you run this from the terminal: launchctl start com.filemaker.fms 

Then check what processes are running and also check the OSX console for any error messages.

Make sure you don't have FMP running at the time since that will prevent FMS from grabbing port 5003 and starting up.

[Andrew Nicolay]

I'm thinking this is an OSX issue and not Filemaker... This Mac Mini literally has nothing on it but Filemaker Server.

When I install filemaker server, at the very end, I noticed there is a item in the dock that is not responding "org.apache.catalina.startup.bootstrap".  If I leave this alone, I can get the admin console to open and go through setup.  However, if I force close this item or restart the mini, all filemaker services vanish.

[Hammerton]

Andrew - Any luck. I am having the exact same issue, including the catalina.startup.bootstrap thing.

 

[Andrew Nicolay]

7 minutes ago, Hammerton said:

Andrew - Any luck. I am having the exact same issue, including the catalina.startup.bootstrap thing.

 

It had something to do with the OS, I had to uninstall everything on the machine, uninstalled java and reinstalled, that seemed to fix it, but I had to use an old version of Java.

[Wim Decorte]

When using old version of FMS you definitely have to stick with the version of Java that comes with it; and not the more recent versions of Java.

That's obviously a security risk so consider it carefully and upgrade if security is a concern.

[ggt667]

I run MacOS X 10.6.4( and its default JDK / JRE ) with FM11SA; it works out of the box.

Newer versions of MacOS X may work, but usually only as upgrades from what I mentioned in the previous sentence.

 

The admin console crashes at times and it's a pity for schedules, however I have made a solution using postgreSQL's JDBC FDW that actually works more reliably than the admin console. I have published some writing on my blog: http://wethecomputerabusersamongst.blogspot.com/2016/08/building-filemaker-cache-in-postgresql.html

Edited December 22, 2016 by ggt667