FileMaker Server Crash – DMP Files

On May 7, 2010, In Tips & Tricks, By admin

A few months ago we had the fun experience of watching FileMaker Server repeatedly crash and become unresponsive.  This occurred randomly over a 2-3 month time period and we began to question the reliability of the server and we checked all hardware components

The symptom of the problem would be that users would get disconnected and the databases seemed just really slow. They would connect back into the database and continue working and on the admin console of the server it would show them with 4 or 5 connections, even if they were not really even there.

At this point the server would not respond to closing the files either from the command line or the admin console.  Users could still work in the hosted databases but without fail the FileMaker Server would crash and create a .dmp file.  The only way to get the it back was to reboot the entire server.  Even stopping the service failed.

FileMaker Priority Support had no answers.  Every time this occurred we reviewed all windows logs, FileMaker logs, Stats, Task Manager processes for clues.  No smoking gun.  There was something that seem to point to the network where FileMaker was waiting on clients but this is normal when users are disconnected.

We became more and more suspect of a network issue and the break came one day when we were reviewing that latest crashing and questioning everyone an their activities.  Users complained that everything seemed slow.  After questioning the users an system admin we piece a few more clues together and it finally came to light that about 2-3 months ago they move a phone system from the WAN side of their internet connection to the LAN.  The phone system was flooding the WAN side so the Phone system engineers had the bright idea of moving the machine to the LAN so it wouldn’t affect the WAN connections.  How someone can think that bringing a faulty system in house will fix the problem is beyond us.

As soon as we unplugged the phone system completely to confirm that this indeed was the culprit, users over the next 2 days asked the COO if they upgraded the internet because everything was so fast.

Problem solved and FileMaker Server was again stable and working as expected.

MyDBSolutions
Certified FileMaker Pro Developers

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FileMaker ODBC and Windows 7

On May 7, 2010, In FileMaker Pro, Tips & Tricks, By admin

When you install FileMaker Pro ODBC drivers on Windows 7 64-bit machine you may find that you are missing the Drivers when you open the Data Sources(ODBC) utility.  There are many articles about a possible regedit change but in this case that didn’t apply.

The driver is a 32-bit driver and the ODBC utility is for the 64-bit.  So to see all the 32 bit drivers go to C:\Windows\sysWOW64\odbcad32.exe and the run the 32-bit ODBC utility.  Remember to create an alias to the file to make it easier to find next time.

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FileMaker Server and IIS

On May 7, 2010, In FileMaker Pro, Tips & Tricks, By admin

IIS 6.0 Communication Issues with FileMaker Server 9, 10, 11

We had a installation on a Windows 2003 Server that failed at the communication with IIS 6.0 every time.  We tried a number of different approaches to remedy the problem but always came back with the same result.  IIS would serve web pages just fine by itself but failed when FileMaker would try to create its link.

FileMaker Server would install successfully and host files using the native sharing over port 5003 without a problem.  But every time it came time to connect with IIS and enable Web Publishing we would receive the error “Web server test failed.  Return code = -1″.  The jakarta redirect would never install but fmi-test would.  Also FileMaker Server would kill IIS every time it tried to link up and IIS would restart.

We called FileMaker Priority Support and they gave some hints but nothing solved the issue.  Here some of the many steps we took:

  • Removed and reinstalled IIS, Manually removed fmi-test
  • Removed and reinstalled FMS, removed FileMaker Server folder
  • Removed all components – IIS 6.0 , FileMaker Server, Java, Apple Bonjour
  • Change Port to 591, Disabled Filewall connections

Suggested Steps from FileMaker Pro Support

  • Remove and Reinstall FMS and IIS  (It’s their favorite step!)
  • Change Ports
  • Installed with network card disabled
  • Reboot Server with only Microsoft services enabled and then manually start Apple Bonjour and FileMaker Server and try the deployment again

None of these worked and It was on a production box that could not be easily rebuilt as it was doing other important tasks as well.  Another good reason that it is always a good idea to have a dedicated machine for your Production databases.

In comparing installations to another Windows 2003 Server with FileMaker Server installed and PHP/IWP working, we finally found that an old employee had change the directory rights on the FileMaker root folder.  He had removed the Users group and explicitly gave himself access to the directory, sub-directories and files .  As soon as we restored the default permissions as they were supposed to be to the Filemaker folder everything worked like magic.

Lessons Learned

  • DO NOT let non-server admins mess with your production servers even if they think they know what they are doing
  • When re-installing FileMaker Server remove the root FileMaker folder and not just the FileMaker Server folder.  (Don’t forget to backup your data.)
  • Continue to encourage clients to have a dedicated FileMaker Pro Server
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Field Grouping

On March 11, 2010, In Tips & Tricks, By admin

Example of a table called Customers:

Address1
Address2
CompanyName
City
FirstName
HomePhone
MobilePhone
LastName
State
WorkPhone
Zip

The challenge with the above list is that when you sort the field list in the table alphabetically Address1 and 2 are both on top while Zip is at the bottom of the list.  If the table structure is relatively small this is not a big deal.  If you have a lot of fields in the table then having your fields grouped together will save you the extra time of trying to find the fields you want.

An easy way to keep those together would be to change the names just slightly to something like this:

Address1
Address2
AddressCity
AddressState
AddressZip
NameCompany
NameFirst
NameLast
PhoneMobile
PhoneHome
PhoneWork

 Notice that you now have groups of Address, Phone and Names and when sorted it keep the like fields together.

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Alternate Field Names / Labels

On March 11, 2010, In FileMaker Pro, By admin

Again I ran into a situation with a client the other day that would like to have different column heading labels when their records were exported to an Microsoft Excel file.  When Filemaker Pro exports the column headings it of course exports the field names as they are defined into the database definition.  I submitted to FileMaker, Inc some time ago a request to add an alternate field name when the database fields are created.  Microsoft Access has had this for years, which I believe they call caption.  The purpose this serves it is gives a human readable label to an otherwise unclear database label.  To the developer of the system a field called ’sompid” may be very clear but ’school of medicine patient identification’ makes it much easier for any person to understand what the field is referring to.

If you are like me I don’t like using any spaces or any characters such as %, -, !, $, etc.  This process works well again for developers but not the end users.

Field Examples / Human Readable Label

__kp_Student /Student ID
NameFL / Full Name
AddressCity / City
PhoneH / Home Phone

You get the idea.

Granted the example of the ’sompid’ had a much too long ‘human readable label’ but hopefully you understand the point.  It would be nice to have the caption/alternate label added when you add new fields to a layout and also when you export your data say to MS Excel.   Something that we would love to see.

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