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Connection Failed – FMP Database Upload

So, you have some new FileMaker databases that you need to upload to FileMaker Server. You go ahead and want to upload them via FileMaker Pro, but you get a “connection failed” message. First, you might double check your login credentials and sure enough, they are correct. You try again, no luck…

upload-fms
connection-failded-fmp-upload
connection-failded-fmp-upload

Hmmm, what could be causing that you might wonder, scratching your head after several attempts from different machines on the same network. You might have also tried to upload them via FileMaker Pro to FileMaker Server on the same machine, but still the same dreaded “connection failed” message…

Doesn’t make sense, as you already have databases hosted on your FileMaker Server and they can be accessed from your FileMaker Pro clients with no problems. So, you also check to make sure any security software wasn’t blocking the upload, still no luck!

Well, we recently had the same problem for a client and after multiple tries and some frustration, we called FileMaker Support. The answer to the conundrum was that you need to have both port 443 available (FileMaker Server needs port 80 and port 443 available for install) and Web Server needs to be enabled at the same time. Web Server which is IIS for Windows and Apache for Mac, not to be confused with Web Publishing Service. Without Web Server being enabled and port 443 available for FileMaker Server, you will not be able to make a connection and upload your databases with FileMaker Pro, no matter if you try to upload via FileMaker Pro on the actual host machine or any other FileMaker Pro client machine.

So, this is how you can go about making sure that Web Server is enabled and running.

Windows

Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and find the select “Sites”. Here you should see “FMWebSite” that will use port 80 for HTTP and port 443 for HTTPS with a status of Started or Stopped, if it says stopped then this is the reason why you are unable to upload databases through FileMaker Pro upload function. The images below are samples and shows you how to enable Web Server for FileMaker again.

iis-stopped
web-server-enabled

Mac OS

FileMaker Server installer creates its own instance of the Apache web server, and FileMaker Server uses port 80 for HTTP and port 443 for HTTPS. You can easily check if the instance of Web Server for FileMaker Server is running. Open Safari and type in localhost in the address field, press enter. If you get the image below then Web Server is running and you should have no problem uploading databases with FileMaker Pro.

fms-instance-of-apache-running

If not then you have to run a command in terminal that will restart the FMS instance of Apache, re-claiming port 80 and 443. Open up terminal and run the following command: 


sudo /Library/FileMaker\ Server/HTTPServer/bin/httpdctl graceful

terminalcommand

You might also want to check that the firewall on the machine that has FileMaker Server running on it has port 443 open as well, especially if you try and upload from another machine than the one that FileMaker Server is running on. This port (443) needs to be open for an upload to work if a firewall is active.

So, after you have enabled Web Server, this is the screen you should see instead of the “connection failed message.

fmp-upload-working

Java Strikes again – Admin Console Access Issues on older FileMaker Server versions

Recently, we had a client that couldn’t open their Filemaker Server Admin Console for FileMaker Server 11. Of course, Java had been updated on the host machine to version 8 update 66. The version of FileMaker Server that the client had was 11v3 and the version of Java that it can handle is Java 6 update 24.

The newer Java version was uninstalled, then Java SE Runtime 6 update 24 was downloaded from Java archives. The machine still had problems with opening the FileMaker Server Admin Console. So, we uninstalled Java completely from the machine, restarted it and installed Java 6 update 24, still having issues opening FileMaker Server Admin Console…

After several attempts with the correct Java version and trying to open FileMaker Server 11 Admin Console in Explorer and Chrome, we finally tried FireFox and viola it opened like charm.

What we have noticed on more than a few machines and even with newer versions of FileMaker Server, not only does the correct Java version matter but also the web browser can make a huge difference.  So, if you have problems even after making sure the Java version is correct, try more than one web browser. FireFox seem to be less picky on issues and opens up the FileMaker Server Admin Console more often.

We are currently working with this client to move them to a newer version of FileMaker Server, so they won’t be at risk by using an old non-secure version of Java.

This is part of what we do, we help with installs of FileMaker Server, but we also help clients that have older versions of FileMaker get migrated to newer, faster and more secure versions.