[Macpartners] FileMaker for Mac OSX question

[Tom Pixton]

Hi all:

Up here at E28, we're running FileMaker Server 5.5 on Mac OS X.2.8 
Server. We have observed a few quirks and are wondering if upgrading 
to FM 6.0 and Panther Server (OS X.3.2) would help.

When we need to stop the server for updates or maintenance, we 
frequently get a corrupted database when starting it up again. We 
make sure all users are logged off before shutting down, as this had 
been a problem. Sometimes, when stopping FileMaker Sever, we get a 
message saying "FileMaker Server ConFig is shutting down. This may 
take a few minutes." and then it takes a half an hour. In such a 
scenario, when starting again, many of the databases won't load, with 
a message indicating those files are corrupted, and need to be 
recovered or restored.

We also had one occasion where we got a message saying "An instance 
of FileMaker is already running" when starting it again. This led to 
a situation where two "instances" of FileMaker were running: one to 
which our users were writing that didn't save any updates, and 
another one, unknown to us, which was the "real" instance. We lost 
three days of data as a result.

We now shut the server off completely and reboot it before restarting 
FileMaker Server. This seems to help, but also seems like we 
shouldn't have to do this to avoid problems.

Any experience with these issues? Haven't found anything relevant yet 
on http://www.filemaker.com/support/techinfo.html.

Thanks.

-- 
Tom Pixton
Publishing Services Bureau
617.258.0648

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