MacOS – Filemaker server BUG: backup schedules DISAPPEAR after restart of host machine. Workarounds

macos

Some time ago I discovered my Filemaker backup schedules mystically disappear. After some research I find out it happens right after restart of host machine.

Eventually I found this post on official filemaker forum

There is a major Schedules bug in FMS 12.0v3 that is happening on a brand new machine with a clean install of everything. This bug is preventing my client's databases from backing up properly (which is probably the most important requirement of all — current backups). I don't know how to solve it, and my client is out $2,000 on a brand new machine.

My client was having this EXACT problem on an old FileMaker Server
machine, so he decided to spend $2,000 on a brand new iMac running
10.8.2 to replace his old machine. We thought that throwing money at the problem would solve the problems, but it didn't work because this
is a bug in FMS 12.0v3.

Completely brand new machine, straight from the Apple Store. We didn't
do ANY migrations of anything… no migration of FMS settings, no OS X
Migration Assistant, nothing. We simply installed FileMaker Server
12.0v1, updated to FileMaker Server 12.0v3, installed the latest Java, manually dragged his FileMaker files into the Databases folder, set
the permissions manually, and opened them in FileMaker Server.

So far, so good.

The problem is with the Schedules. I created 4 Schedules to backup all
the databases on a daily basis, and I manually tested all 4 Schedules
by right-clicking on each one and choosing "Run Schedule". All of them
completed perfectly fine. They all backed up the databases just fine.

However, after I Stop FileMaker Server (using the Stop button in the
Admin Console, with a countdown time of 0 minutes) and I restart the
machine, one or more of the schedules WILL COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR from
FileMaker Server!! The schedules just completely delete themselves,
never to be found again!!

And, for the schedules that DO somehow luckily remain in FileMaker
Server, they no longer show a "Last Completed" date anymore. They've
completely wiped out any history of their previous successful backups.
I don't even know if they will run again at their scheduled time. But
after each time I stop FileMaker Server & restart the machine,
Schedules will start deleting themselves.

This is hugely problematic, because backups are of mission critical
importance. This is on a brand new machine, just a few hours old, with
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on the machine except for FileMaker Server and
Java. No migration of any data from anywhere… databases &
configuration settings were manually moved over.

This is the cleanest & purest testing environment ever, and yet this
serious major bug is still happening.

And I just don't know what to do in this case, how should I make automatic backups?

Should I relinquish Filemaker server's scheduling completely, and start using 3rd party automatic software (say, "Time Machine" since I have Mac).

Or maybe I should make some sort of notification for system administrator? ( Startup Banner with text: "Filemaker schedule is corrupted and needs to be restored manually" )

Did anyone face this bug, too?

UPD I reapaired disk permissions, but it didn't help.

Best Answer

I think I found a solution for this problem. Check your settings in the "Security & Privacy" Control-Panel. If your settings are on "Anywhere" by "Allow Applications Downloaded from" put it back to "Mac App Store and idetified developers" recreate your schedules in FMS and do a restart again. My schedules then kept in place. But be carefully. Do not reimport any exported FMS schedules. They will disapear again. Only way I could reuse some exported schedules was when I imported them while the settings where on "Anywhere" and then set the settings back to "Mac App Store and...". If I did it like this they kept in place. Hope this helps you.

Update: Some further test's where bringing some further strange behavior. While I was investigate this issue I created a home directory for the fmsadmin user but cleared it out afterwards because I was thinking this is not the solution for the Issue. But after a reboot the schedules dissapeared again. I recreated then a home directory for the fmsadmin unser (did this in Workgroup Manager for 10.8 which is to seperatedly installed from Apple) and then the schedules I newly created kept in place. So you probably have to play through some different setups to get back in business.

Regards

Fix

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