Rawns Posted June 15, 2012 Posted June 15, 2012 Do any of you guys use the FMS Database Selector in school? If so, where do you store your 'SS_FMS_Companies.ini' file? We store ours on the S: drive but are seeing an increase in the number of calls where all of a sudden, both FMS databases entries (one for the old school system & one for the new academy system) point to the same database! We then have to manually change the SS_FMS_Companines.ini file back to opoint the changed entry to the original database. I thought that maybe I could just make the ini file read only, but FMS then complains it can't write to the SS_FMS_Companies.ini file, which baffles me as I don't know why the ini file needs to be written to? I would have assumed that it's just being read? Can anyone shed some light on this?
6Foot2 Posted June 15, 2012 Posted June 15, 2012 Which operating system are your SIMS clients on? I ask because we had exactly the same issue with Windows XP: Pro: 32 Bit: SP3 but the problem went away when we moved them to Windows 7 Pro: SP1: 64 Bit without me having to do any work at all. I never did find out what was causing it. 1
Rawns Posted June 18, 2012 Author Posted June 18, 2012 Which operating system are your SIMS clients on? I ask because we had exactly the same issue with Windows XP: Pro: 32 Bit: SP3 but the problem went away when we moved them to Windows 7 Pro: SP1: 64 Bit without me having to do any work at all. I never did find out what was causing it. I think most of them are XP devices. There have been a few over a long period of time, so unsure if any were Win 7 devices.
6Foot2 Posted June 18, 2012 Posted June 18, 2012 I think most of them are XP devices. There have been a few over a long period of time, so unsure if any were Win 7 devices. Is it worth you trying a station on Windows 7? [Reminder: We went from XP 32 Bit to Windows 7: 64 Bit] 1
Rawns Posted June 18, 2012 Author Posted June 18, 2012 Is it worth you trying a station on Windows 7? [Reminder: We went from XP 32 Bit to Windows 7: 64 Bit] Thank's for the suggestion, I doubt the schools affected will want to re-image devices to Win 7 just to fix this.
Edu-IT Posted April 26, 2013 Posted April 26, 2013 Do you have a link to that post Matt? This is happening here.
Edu-IT Posted April 30, 2013 Posted April 30, 2013 Haha! Fixed the blasted thing. The local FMSConnect.ini on the machine was a redirect one, which of course doesn't work with the database selector.
synaesthesia Posted October 11, 2013 Posted October 11, 2013 Any information/details on this? This has just started happening to us out of the blue. Been working fine since it was all done in September, then literally 45 minutes ago, this happens and both shortcuts point to the same database! Supportnet link would be useful
Rawns Posted October 11, 2013 Author Posted October 11, 2013 Any information/details on this? This has just started happening to us out of the blue. Been working fine since it was all done in September, then literally 45 minutes ago, this happens and both shortcuts point to the same database! Supportnet link would be useful We've now taken to storing this file locally on each FMS machine. Seems to eradicate the issue of a file being somehow modified.
synaesthesia Posted October 11, 2013 Posted October 11, 2013 That would be a sound solution but I don't quite understand enough about how the FDS works to implement it. I found the relevant file thanks to this thread (SS_Companies_FMS.ini or something) in an odd location (S:\SIMS\FMS) and for reasons unknown the academy DB had been changed to the school's one. call logged with Capita to investigate why that happened in the first place, although I'm even more concerned about how it happened with nothing changed whatsoever. Wondering if Solus 3 had something to do with it. For now I've changed that file and fmsconnect.ini but worried this is going to happen again.
Rawns Posted October 11, 2013 Author Posted October 11, 2013 That would be a sound solution but I don't quite understand enough about how the FDS works to implement it. I found the relevant file thanks to this thread (SS_Companies_FMS.ini or something) in an odd location (S:\SIMS\FMS) and for reasons unknown the academy DB had been changed to the school's one. call logged with Capita to investigate why that happened in the first place, although I'm even more concerned about how it happened with nothing changed whatsoever. Wondering if Solus 3 had something to do with it. For now I've changed that file and fmsconnect.ini but worried this is going to happen again. Sorry if this covers a bit of what you already know! FDS allows access to multiple databases. Each FMS client has FDS but is only used in multiple FMS database environments. When ran for the first time, you configure it with LA and DfE number, point it to the SS_FMS_Companies.ini (which contains details about the FMS databases you have) and point it to where the Finance.exe is. Once configured, user can either load into the appropriate FMS databases through FDS, or use it to create direct desktop shortcuts. I think in the tools menu you can reconfigure it. Simply copy the SS_FMS_Companies.ini into the local C:\Program Files\SIMS\FMSSQL folder, run FDS and go to the tools menu and configuration (going from memory here, may be different but sure you CNN find it!). Just amend the location of the SS_FMS file to point to the local one rather than the one on the S: drive. Doubt SOLUS3 is to blame on this one as it does not support remote configuring of FDS! We believe it happens when users either try to open other FMS databases when they already have FMS open, or when multiple users access different databases at the same time, but we've not tested it.
synaesthesia Posted October 11, 2013 Posted October 11, 2013 Cheers. I vaguely remember setting it up originally. Wonder what Capita will come back with. My train of thought on Solus3 was that you specify the default fmsconnect.ini in it, wasn't sure if it enforced that (but believe that's just on initial install of FMS). Might have a play about with a test setup and see if I can recreate it. Quite a pain when it happens! In the meantime I'll just make sure that the relevant finance staff have different username and passwords for each one (1. they should anyway and 2. I'm sure they do anyway, as this is how it was flagged up). Otherwise it's hard to tell, even when logged into the "wrong database" it very clearly states the correct database name at the top. I'm rather annoyed this hasn't been long patched since you first brought it up well over a year ago!
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