Unable to see shared files through hosts

#11

Quote:

When you say you see filemaker polling the network, do you mean by
watching blinking leds?

yes, AND by watching the activity displayed over the taskbar icon for the
LAN connection, AND by monitoring the bytes exchanged over the NIC.

Quote:

Also, you say you have no hub, you mean you are using a crossover cable
(not that this matters per se, since file sharing is working, you can
assume you have unicast working ok). If so, you should be safe setting
the nics to 100FD.

yes I'm using a crossover cable. This setup has worked fine for years. NIC
on PC1 is currently set to "auto" but I've tried setting it to 100FD as
well.

Quote:

You mention a firewall, which seems odd if it's just a local peer to
peer net with no uplink. Is one of the pcs being used to share an
internet connection? And if there's no uplink to this private net, how
are you handling DNS?

I didn't mention this because I didn't think it was relevant (I should have
known better ;-), but yes, PC 1 has a second NIC connected to an ADSL modem.
PC 2 connects to the outside through Windows ICS.

Quote:

What you might try is running a sniffer program on one or both machines,
and watching the whole process unfold.

ok, I'm sure I can find a couple of those, but do you have any suggestions
for sniffers ?

Thanks very much for your help so far,

Peter

Quote:

Situation :

PC 1 : Win2k, FMPro 5.5v1, host
PC 2 : Win2k, FMPro 5.0v3, guest

They're hooked up in a simple direct (no hub/router) peer-to-peer
network
over TCP/IP.

PC 1 : IP 192.168.0.1
PC 2 : IP 192.168.0.2
Both have the same subnet

Everything has worked fine for years (!) until I decided I needed to
replace
the hard drive in PC 1, that hosted the Filemaker files.

Now, the network is running smoothly, OS filesharing works like a charm,
BUT
I cannot see any hosted files from PC2 through the "Hosts" menu, i.e. no
host can be seen or selected, let alone shared files. Neither when I
specify
host using name or IP. Although Filemaker is visibly probing over the
network - and getting response as well - it can't seem to find the host.
If
however I open the files as the host on PC2 (bad, I know) I *can* see
them
through the "Hosts" menu on PC 1.

I can open the files from PC 2 (hosted by PC 1) if I don't go through
"Hosts" but just specify the physical location of the files on PC 1
(i.e.
through the OS filesharing). But I don't want to do that (bad
performance,
file corruption etc.).

Since nothing has changed on PC 2 I can only conclude the cause must lie
with PC 1, but where ?

The things I have tried and checked so far :

- Clean install on both machines
- Swapping FM Pro versions to the other machine (i.e. 5.5 to PC 2, 5.0
to PC
1)
- Checked TCP/IP settings, everything identical to old situation
- Nevertheless tried disabling filesharing on OS level, no luck
- Files are definitely set to Multi-user (not hidden)
- Changed the location of the files from D: to C: partition
- Shutdown firewall
- Forced NIC to 100 full-duplex in stead of auto
- Forced NIC to 100 half-duplex in stead of auto

At a loss here, anyone ?

Thanks,

Peter

#12

Thanks,

that really brought my hopes up, but unfortunately it didn't work. I was
already logged in as Administrator but logging in under a different account
made no difference.

Regards,

Peter

Quote:

Win2k right?
I had a simlar problem.
Log into a different account on the problem box
and try again. See if that works.

I logged in as the administrator and it worked fine.
The main user account just got screwed up. There
is a setting that got changed but I can't remember what it was.
I just created a new account for the user
and everything worked with no problems.

hope that helps..

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:43:51 -0500, bil hays <bil_hays (AT) unc (DOT) edu> wrote:

In article <br9cqi$2b7$1 (AT) reader10 (DOT) wxs.nl>,
"Peter" <nomail (AT) homerorwork (DOT) tnx> wrote:

I have quoted my original post below for completeness but to answer
your
questions directly: yes, the files have been set to multi-user (not
hidden)
and no, the files do not list when I specify an IP or DNS address,
moreover
not even the host name lists: the list is just empty. It's strange,
when I
give the IP adress or DNS name I actually see Filemaker polling the
network,
AND get a response from the host machine, but the host list still comes
up
empty. As stated, the other way around works perfect.

I'm pretty certain that the cause has nothing to do with Filemaker,
since I
switched the Filemaker installations around (i.e. 5.0 to pc1 and 5.5 to
pc2)
but the problem remained, i.e. pc2 came up fine in the host list of pc
1,
but pc1 still did not come up in pc2's host list. I've tried about
every
variation in TCP/IP settings, to no avail.

Thanks for your help,

When you say you see filemaker polling the network, do you mean by
watching blinking leds?

Also, you say you have no hub, you mean you are using a crossover cable
(not that this matters per se, since file sharing is working, you can
assume you have unicast working ok). If so, you should be safe setting
the nics to 100FD.

You mention a firewall, which seems odd if it's just a local peer to
peer net with no uplink. Is one of the pcs being used to share an
internet connection? And if there's no uplink to this private net, how
are you handling DNS?

What you might try is running a sniffer program on one or both machines,
and watching the whole process unfold.

Peter

My apologies if this seems too obvious or if you already stated this
in
your original post (which has since been deleted from my machine).
But
are the files set to multi-user and not hidden? Do the files list
properly when you click 'specify host' and enter the direct IP or DNS
address?

My original post :

Situation :

PC 1 : Win2k, FMPro 5.5v1, host
PC 2 : Win2k, FMPro 5.0v3, guest

They're hooked up in a simple direct (no hub/router) peer-to-peer
network
over TCP/IP.

PC 1 : IP 192.168.0.1
PC 2 : IP 192.168.0.2
Both have the same subnet

Everything has worked fine for years (!) until I decided I needed to
replace
the hard drive in PC 1, that hosted the Filemaker files.

Now, the network is running smoothly, OS filesharing works like a
charm, BUT
I cannot see any hosted files from PC2 through the "Hosts" menu, i.e.
no
host can be seen or selected, let alone shared files. Neither when I
specify
host using name or IP. Although Filemaker is visibly probing over the
network - and getting response as well - it can't seem to find the
host. If
however I open the files as the host on PC2 (bad, I know) I *can* see
them
through the "Hosts" menu on PC 1.

I can open the files from PC 2 (hosted by PC 1) if I don't go through
"Hosts" but just specify the physical location of the files on PC 1
(i.e.
through the OS filesharing). But I don't want to do that (bad
performance,
file corruption etc.).

Since nothing has changed on PC 2 I can only conclude the cause must
lie
with PC 1, but where ?

The things I have tried and checked so far :

- Clean install on both machines
- Swapping FM Pro versions to the other machine (i.e. 5.5 to PC 2, 5.0
to PC
1)
- Checked TCP/IP settings, everything identical to old situation
- Nevertheless tried disabling filesharing on OS level, no luck
- Files are definitely set to Multi-user (not hidden)
- Changed the location of the files from D: to C: partition
- Shutdown firewall
- Forced NIC to 100 full-duplex in stead of auto
- Forced NIC to 100 half-duplex in stead of auto

At a loss here, anyone ?

Thanks,

Peter

#13

In article <brbvjv$eqa$1 (AT) reader08 (DOT) wxs.nl>,
"Peter" <nomail (AT) homerorwork (DOT) tnx> wrote:

Quote:

When you say you see filemaker polling the network, do you mean by
watching blinking leds?

yes, AND by watching the activity displayed over the taskbar icon for the
LAN connection, AND by monitoring the bytes exchanged over the NIC.

Cool.

Quote:

Also, you say you have no hub, you mean you are using a crossover cable
(not that this matters per se, since file sharing is working, you can
assume you have unicast working ok). If so, you should be safe setting
the nics to 100FD.

yes I'm using a crossover cable. This setup has worked fine for years. NIC
on PC1 is currently set to "auto" but I've tried setting it to 100FD as
well.

Generally, setting such manually is the best way to go, since sometimes
autonegotiation fails, but it looks like your nics are doing fine, and
if anything works, this isn't the source of the problem.

Quote:

You mention a firewall, which seems odd if it's just a local peer to
peer net with no uplink. Is one of the pcs being used to share an
internet connection? And if there's no uplink to this private net, how
are you handling DNS?

I didn't mention this because I didn't think it was relevant (I should have
known better ;-), but yes, PC 1 has a second NIC connected to an ADSL modem.
PC 2 connects to the outside through Windows ICS.

I don't know that it is relevent, but it might be. You know that the two
machines can see each other since file sharing is working, and I'm
assuming ping also works. I'd suggest trying to disable ICS, the
firewall, and also the second nic, then restart the pc and see if that
changes anything.

You should also run the arp -a command on both machines and make sure
that the ip number of the other machine matches it's hardware address.
Since everything else seems to work, this is probably all ok, tho, but
it can't hurt to check.

FWIW, the ICS software isn't exactly the most standards compliant bit of
code out there in the world, and if you're doing work on both pcs, using
a local firewall and ICS for the uplink isn't the most secure way to go
(although the fact that you'd taking any measures puts you way ahead of
most folks). Might be worth considering a little hardware NAT for the
uplink, depending on how much security you think you need balanced
against the cost.

Quote:

What you might try is running a sniffer program on one or both machines,
and watching the whole process unfold.

ok, I'm sure I can find a couple of those, but do you have any suggestions
for sniffers ?

I like ethereal, but I've not used it under windows.

What I'm thinking is that one possibility is one or both of the machines
(but probably the one running the ICS) is confused about how to handle
broadcasts, might be munging either the ip number in the header or might
be using the wrong hardware address. What I'd expect to see is one or
more broadcasts from PC2 when you open the hosts lists, followed by a
unicast back from PC1, starting a brief conversation with a list of
databases. In any case, if you sniff the conversation, you can see
what's going on.

As an example, under OS X from my mac, when I open remote in filemaker,
my workstation sends out a UDP broadcast to 152.2.255.255 port 5003 (I'm
on the 152.2.0.0 network). Our fmserver machine, also OS X, sends back a
UDP packet from 5003 to the workstation. Then they switch to TCP and the
list of hosts is exchanged.

Quote:

Thanks very much for your help so far,

Peter

--
________________
bil hays
Network Manager
Computer Science

#14

Hi Bill,

thanks for all your suggestions. In the end I decided that it was time to
finally upgrade the network, incorporate 2 more pc's that had been working
stand-alone up to this point, AND take Filemaker up on their offer for a
free copy of version 6, if a full version was bought before December 15th. I
decided to bring everything together with a Linksys Router/Switch.

So now I have 4 pc's networked, 3 of which are currently running FM. PC 1 is
running version 6, the other 5 and 5.5. And who would have thought it ? My
problem has gone away... PC1 shows up fine as the host on PC2 and PC3 !
Finally got rid of ICS as well, so I guess it's a good thing altogether.

It really bugs me that I had to "solve" the problem with this sledge hammer
method, but in the end I figured it just took too much of my time and the
risk of data corruption was too high. Although I still don't know what the
cause was and whether it was Filemaker or TCP/IP related, the most important
thing is everything is ok again.

I really want to thank you for the time you've put into this problem. Hope I
can help you somewhere down the line.

Best regards,

Peter

Quote:

I don't know that it is relevent, but it might be. You know that the two
machines can see each other since file sharing is working, and I'm
assuming ping also works. I'd suggest trying to disable ICS, the
firewall, and also the second nic, then restart the pc and see if that
changes anything.

You should also run the arp -a command on both machines and make sure
that the ip number of the other machine matches it's hardware address.
Since everything else seems to work, this is probably all ok, tho, but
it can't hurt to check.

FWIW, the ICS software isn't exactly the most standards compliant bit of
code out there in the world, and if you're doing work on both pcs, using
a local firewall and ICS for the uplink isn't the most secure way to go
(although the fact that you'd taking any measures puts you way ahead of
most folks). Might be worth considering a little hardware NAT for the
uplink, depending on how much security you think you need balanced
against the cost.

What you might try is running a sniffer program on one or both
machines,
and watching the whole process unfold.

ok, I'm sure I can find a couple of those, but do you have any
suggestions
for sniffers ?

I like ethereal, but I've not used it under windows.

What I'm thinking is that one possibility is one or both of the machines
(but probably the one running the ICS) is confused about how to handle
broadcasts, might be munging either the ip number in the header or might
be using the wrong hardware address. What I'd expect to see is one or
more broadcasts from PC2 when you open the hosts lists, followed by a
unicast back from PC1, starting a brief conversation with a list of
databases. In any case, if you sniff the conversation, you can see
what's going on.

As an example, under OS X from my mac, when I open remote in filemaker,
my workstation sends out a UDP broadcast to 152.2.255.255 port 5003 (I'm
on the 152.2.0.0 network). Our fmserver machine, also OS X, sends back a
UDP packet from 5003 to the workstation. Then they switch to TCP and the
list of hosts is exchanged.

Thanks very much for your help so far,

Peter

--
________________
bil hays
Network Manager
Computer Science

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Unable to see shared files through hosts

comp.databases.filemaker comp.databases.filemaker

Re: Unable to see shared files through hosts... anybody ? - 12-12-2003 , 02:45 AM

Re: Unable to see shared files through hosts... anybody ? - 12-12-2003 , 02:47 AM

Re: Unable to see shared files through hosts... anybody ? - 12-12-2003 , 07:41 AM

Re: Unable to see shared files through hosts... anybody ? - 12-12-2003 , 09:10 AM