Troubleshooting Error Code 802 and FileMaker Go Bug – Update

Error Code 802: Unable to Open File

While helping develop a FileMaker Go solution recently, we hit an unexpected snag (is there any other kind?) late in development cycle.  Our stand alone solution is designed to automatically connect to a FileMaker Server to get updated information on a routine basis every time it starts up. Since our clients are not always able to connect to the internet, we have code to allow them to safely bypass the check-in if that is the case.

Towards the end of the development cycle, we activated the code to make the call, and started testing.  And immediately ran into problems:  FileMaker Go version 15 connected right away.  FileMaker Go 16 connected with one user, but not another user.  Both were using the same beta version of the software, both had the same version of FileMaker Go:  v 16.0.4.   One of the first steps in troubleshooting is to add error capture code in order to see what is going wrong,  We did that, and were rewarded with error code 802:  Unable to open file.  Which is something we knew, of course.  But why could one user open it and not another?

The Search Begins

So I looked for some help on the internet and found that error code 802 had been puzzling people going back to 2004, and there were a variety of causes:

  • Permission errors
  • Database source not open on the server
  • No reason, just happens occasionally
  • Inaccurate database relationships
  • FileMaker server bug
  • DSN managers trying to setup a connection via ODBC
  • Overloaded server

The list went on, and every solution identified did not apply to our situation.  The server file was present and available on the server to FileMaker Go users, and was accessible by using Open Remote directly from FileMaker Pro client, as well as FileMaker Go 15 (a requirement for this project).

For the record, our setup is pertty straight forward:  The FileMaker 16 server is housed on an AWS (Amazon Web Services) server, and is the limited developer version allowing one concurrent hookup.  Only one user was connecting (and immediately disconnecting after running a short script) at a time, so too many concurrent connections was not the problem.

After thinking about FileMaker 16 differences from earlier platforms, a thought occurred:  This might be a security problem with FileMaker 16’s new, rigid SSL requirements.  I checked, and our temporary FileMaker SSL certificate, issued by the FileMaker Server for development purposes, had expired.  Every time a new user tried to connect to the server with FileMaker Go 16, the server threw a popup warning that the connection to the database on the server was not secure.  During a normal connection via FileMaker client, this is not a problem, as the user can click the button to proceed.

Security Warning
This is what a user sees on login…but when a script opens this database, this is not shown and Error 802 is thrown.

When logging on via a script, however, this option was not available, and the file would not open – Error 802.

Problem solved

We were able to connect every user by simply adding a Host entry with the IP address to the iPad – when a user adds the host, the security warning shows up during the process and the user can permanently add the server to the approved list.  Short term, that works out.  I later added an SSL certificate to the server, solving the problem in the long term.  And a valid SSL Certificate is something necessary for almost all FileMaker Server installs with containing sensitive data (the exclusions include local servers inside a secure firewall).

So add one more option to Error Code 802:  Unable to open file via script due to SSL Certificate requirements with FileMaker 16.


FileMaker Go Bug – UPDATE

I reported what I suspected was a FileMaker Go bug on Monday here.  It turns out to be the real deal:

Thank you for your posts and movie file.  I am able to reproduce the issue with FileMaker Go 16.0.4 under iOS 11.2.6 using an iPad Pro.  I have sent all information, including a sample file, to our Development and Testing departments for review.  When I receive any feedback, I will let you know.

TSGal

FileMaker, Inc.

Hopefully, it will be patched soon.

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