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Hi all, please excuse the newby question.

I run OSX servers with Filemaker and Terascript (formerly Witango, before that Tango). Terascript talks to Filemaker via JDBC so I have installed the Filemaker Xdbc extensions (JDBC, ODBC). It is a listener process that waits for JDBC commands and interprets them and passes them on to Filemaker and returns the results.

The process is xdbc_listener and in both the Server and Client version of Filemaker it has a memory leak and slowly grows in memory footprint until it reaches the limit of the server and then crashes. In FMP (client) it brings up a dialog box with an option to click Reopen. On Server there is no outward sign, just that JDBC calls fail.

I am trying to write a script to test if xdbc_listener is running. If it is, the script should just write to a log file and die nicely. If not, it should trigger a restart of the process.

I have edited an old script that I use on older servers to test if FileMaker has crashed but it doesn't seem to correctly ascertain whether or not the process is running:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
 
#checking to see if fmxdbc_listener exists and writing to a variable

/bin/ps ax |grep fmxdbc_listener |egrep -v "grep|checkfmxdbc" > /dev/null 2>&1

#echo "$checkfmxdbc"

if [ $? = "0" ]; then
	echo "fmxdbc_listener is still Running - `date`" >>  /checkfmxdbc.log
else
	echo "ERROR - fmxdbc_listener is NOT Running - `date`" >>  /checkfmxdbc.log
	cd /Applications/FileMaker\ Pro\ 11\ Advanced/Extensions/xDBC\ Support/fmxdbc_listener.bundle/Contents/MacOS/
	./fmxdbc_listener -u &
fi

Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated.

I am running:
OSX 10.6.8 on Mac mini with 2Gb RAM
Terascript Server 6.07
Filemaker Server 11.0.3 w/XDBC plug-in 11.3.81 (on one server)
Filemaker Client 11.0.4 w/XDBC plug-in 11.3.76 (on the other)

Why don't you recuperate the processID ($$) when you launch xdbc_listener ?
You can use it as a suffix for a file name e.g. xdbc_listener_proc.$$ you put in /tmp, and then just use ps to grep processID value
How long does it take before it goes bezeurk?
I for those apps or software with issues tend to use cron to schedule a stop/start at 11 PM...

I seems to happen once or twice a week at current load.

I'm not sure how to recuperate the processID at launch time. If this would help I would appreciate your guidance.

But shouldn't I be able to find out if a process is running by it's name?

Yes...
But is it the one You launched?...

That said, here is for you:
There are so called Special shell Variables such as
$0 which is Filename of the script
$1-9 are known as positional parameters
..
$? return value (e.g. exit values...)
$$ ProcessID (PID) of script
$! Process ID of last job run in background
etc..

Try to add in your script to launch the listener:

Code:

        my_pid=$$
        (date;echo "listener started, PID is: " $my_pid )|xargs >>/tmp/listener_restart.log

The only problem I see with this is that I don't initially launch the process. It is a part of FileMaker's start up. So getting the initial PID might be a problem.

Any chance I could get some help with this line:

Code:

/bin/ps ax |grep fmxdbc_listener |egrep -v "grep|checkfmxdbc" > /dev/null 2>&1

I guess the intention is that it returns 0 then the process is running and if not, then the process is not running. Any idea why it is not behaving this way?

Moderator's Comments:

Video tutorial on how to use code tags in The UNIX and Linux Forums.

Start by using your command line WITHOUT redirection, to see if it porduces the wanted output!

Code:

/bin/ps ax |grep fmxdbc_listener |egrep -v "grep|checkfmxdbc"

Then if happy, decide what it is for