FileMaker Server: File cannot be modified

Moin Moin,

Today I had a case where the server was a bit bitchy because changes in gFM-Business were not saved and the message appeared that "the file could not be changed".

Such an error message almost always has something to do with file system rights of macOS (or Windows). Claris FileMaker Server uses the user "fmserver user" under macOS to write to the FileMaker files. If this user has no rights in the relevant file path, the error message mentioned above may occur, with the result that you cannot enter any data into the databases on a client.

Solution to the problem

On macOS, the Claris FileMaker Server data is located under the following path by default:

/Library/FileMaker Server/Data/Databases/

• Check all gFM Business databases with the extension .fmp12 to see whether the user "fmserver" has read and write permissions in all files. To do this, click on the relevant file in the macOS Finder and select the context function "Information" or press the key combination [cmd-i]. Check whether the user "fmserver" with read and write rights exists in this dialog in the "Sharing and access rights" area.
• If your databases are located in a folder, please also check in the subfolder whether the user "fmserver" exists with read and write rights.

In principle, these problems can also occur under Windows, but here no special user is used for write access to the FileMaker databases, so that any problems under Windows in this direction should have to do with general file system rights.