Hi all,

I posted before about this, but still have not found an answer, and
also found something rather disturbing, which makes it more important
that i can 'hide' the filemaker server.

We will have two server, used only for development and testing
purposes, that should not be seen by normal users (but should be by
myself and a few others). I'd like to have a way to 'hide' a server,
so that it doesn't show up in the list of local servers.

The disturbing bit I discovered is this; if i have a file hosted on a
production FM 7 server on a non-local network, and that same file is
hosted on the developmen server, my FM 7 client will attempt to open
the file on the Development server, instead of the one on the
production server! This is unacceptable, as there are some files that
are access from both locations, and users should never be allowed to
access development.

Thanks for any help.

Andy

I think your SOL on this one.

My experience with FileMaker Server and FMP is that if you get a
startup file opening the file "Main" on the server, and that "Main"
file opens a related "Company" file also on the same server it usually
works. But then every once in a while, FMP decides to open the
"Company" file that some user copied into a shared folder somewhere.

My suggestion to you is this; don't EVER have 2 files with the same
name ANYWHERE on any computers that FMP can potentially acess,
eventually it will find it and link to the wrong file. By making the
same files available on 2 servers, you are asking for problems.

If I was you I would use FM Developer to rename the testing files. I
would also remove user accounts from the testing files so that they
can't mess with the data.

In article <1126202039.897604.213290 (AT) g14g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
ajohnstone (AT) capcitypress (DOT) com says...
I beleive you can do this with FM's integration with Active Directory.
As access to filemaker becomes a managed object like printers, network
shares, and so forth... I honestly haven't played with that feature
myself.

A much simpler approach however would probably be to just firewall the
dev unit, and only allow incomming connections on the FM port from the
dev stations. Any half decent firewall can do this.

Its the same issue you'd have in web design if you set made all the urls
fully qualified to resolve to the development computer, instead of
"relative"

Read the manual about about file references. As of FM7 you have explicit
control over them, a good thing. The file references are probably hard-
coded to load off the dev server instead 'relatively' off the server
they are on.

In particular if its an upgrade from FM6 or earlier you probably have a
whole mess of file references.


Good Luck,
Dave

In article <1126220885.957500.95480 (AT) f14g2000cwb (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
a (AT) pottnerconsulting (DOT) ca says...
Good advice overall, but in the case of development & live files its
pretty much the norm.

That makes it rather hard to validate that it works in user-mode if
you've stripped out the user accounts though.

-Dave

42 <nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:

Actually, when I have to develop on a network where there are already
hosted files, I do one of two things:

1. Set my local copy of Filemaker Developer to NONE under network
protocol
2. Physically disconnect my machine from the network.

Under no circumstances do I, nor any other developer I know (and I know
a metric shitload of them) have two identically named copies of live
files on the same network or even the same hard drive. It's not the
"norm."

My development machine at the office has all copies of FMD set to no
network as well. I prefer not to embed IP addresses in my scripts,
relationships and calculations, which will cause problems after
deployment on client networks. I have also, in the past when I wasn't
so scrupulous about keep the networking off, had my local machine
connect to FM hosted files AT THE CLIENT SITE, just because it could. :/

In testing and development, if you need to have the files hosted during
such, maintain a separate small network available only to the working
developers/testers. Do not expose both working files and development
files on the same network. You will never be able to keep people out of
the wrong files, or the files from establishing links to the wrong
files. FM's approach to paths is and always has been "whatever."

Likewise, if you must connect a development computer with the files on
the hard drive to the larger network, Zip or Stuff your working files,
so that users wandering the network don't connect to them on your
machine. All my backups are routinely compressed so there can be no
confusion.

Lynn Allen
--
Allen & Allen Semiotics www.semiotics.com
FSA Associate Filemaker Design & Consulting

In article <1h2l5sl.2dnj8t499cg0N%lynn (AT) NOT-semiotics (DOT) com>, lynn@NOT-
semiotics.com says...
I do the first one myself. But neither is viable for connecting to a
development server.

I misspoke. I beleive it is the norm for the development files to have
the same names as the final files, but I agree that users should never
have any sort of access to more than one set, and developers should
severely limit the times they have access to multiple sets with the same
names... e.g. to doing imports for example.

Overall I agree.

I've found the file references in FM7 (and now 8) do not have this
problem if you manage your file references. Given that there is always
reoom for user error, I still agree.

Agreed. Although using a firewall on the server to partition them on the
same lan should also be sufficient, and possibly more practical
depending on the lan topology, or the active directory solution if it
does what its supposed to be able to do.

Agreed.

HI everyone,

Thanks for all of your responses.

It sounds like firewalling or using a different domain (once we have
them..) is the way to go to prevent users from going to the wrong
server.

I did double check file references (yes, this is a conversion of FM6
databases) and a few had 'fmnet:/*/<file>'. I set them all to
'file:<file>' Most of the problems have gone away, but i still get the
issue now and then.

I like the idea of controlling access via AD; we are switching from a
Novell network soon, so I will explore that one later. I'm not sure it
would stop a user from picking 'Local filemaker server' from the
dropdown though on the open remote.

Thanks again!
Andy

Andy <ajohnstone (AT) capcitypress (DOT) com> wrote:

you can use the subnet mask to restrain acces to near adresseses (fixed
IP only...)

--
Philippe Manet

In article <20050909231057808173@[10.0.0.1]>, pmanet (AT) invivo (DOT) edu says...
subnet filtering is not the only option.

You can literally filter to a specific address, hostname (reverse dns
lookup), or even mac address if you want.

Sure these techniques are vulnerable to spoofing, but the goal isn't to
prevent hackers from cracking it... its to prevent filemaker from
inadvertantly opening the wrong file.