Possible Corruption Issues with Filemaker Pro and KM?

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hello, all. I wanted to see if anyone could offer suggestions.

My problem is Filemaker Pro related but I'm using KM in my scripts and it's possible that KM is somehow causing the errors in its interaction with Filemaker, hence I'm posting here.

Basically, my problem: I've got a single flatfile database that I use to create 25 or so tweets to schedule for twitter every evening. Around six months ago or so I started getting periodic color wheels of death that lasted for 10-20 seconds, followed by a mysterious error that says, "Can't make <<data..." followed by a long string of garbage. I also get "an error of -25133 has occurred" or sometimes "Unknown error -1700." Neither of these errors appears in any guide I can find in any list of Filemaker error codes, for example this one.

02
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Whenever I get one of these errors, quitting and reloading the database in question makes it work fine for another 5-20 minutes. Sometimes the errors come more frequently (which is frustrating), and I find that restarting the computer makes them come less often for a while (or so it seems to me). The errors happen both in a shared Filemaker server situation or with the file stores locally on my computer. They happen pretty much the same in Filemaker 14 as well as Filemaker 16, which I recently upgraded to. If I let the Filemaker file stay open for a while, or if I sleep the computer then wake it up, I always get the -25133 error and have to quit and reload the database.

What I thought was that my years of bad Filemaker database habits, such as letting my file live locally in a Dropbox folder, had finally caught up with me and I had a serious corruption problem. So I rolled up my sleeves and recreated the database entirely from scratch, following my original, although I did copy-paste the scripts, which I'm maybe not supposed to do from a "database purist" point of view. The new file unfortunately gives the same errors as the old, making me think my problem isn't Filemaker corruption, but perhaps some interaction with KM.

Basically the Filemaker script does things like, take a time such as 10:30:00 and pass it to KM variables, then uses Applescript from inside a FIlemaker script step to pass behaivour to a KM script to complete each task. Sometimes KM gets data from a field with Applescript, and sometimes I'm using the clipboard, preparing the text I need in an Applescript inside a KM script then pasting it into my Filemaker field.

So my question is, has anyone ever heard of these kinds of errors in Filemaker (no one in any Filemaker group I asked in had), and do you know of any issues with KM and Filemaker, for example interacting with KM might cause a memory leak or something like that. If there are any Filemaker gurus here, any advice you can offer would be great too.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

2

I'm not very knowledgeable, but I have some thoughts. 1. Did you check the KM logs? They can be easily found under the KM Editor Help menu. 2. Do you have a second computer to check this on? The second computer would have a different instance of macOS, a different CPU, etc, which would eliminate those things. 3. Can you indicate exactly which version of macOS and KM you have installed? 4. open the macOS log file with the Console app and check that when the error occurs. 5. Can you boot macOS in safe mode and try it there? Or alternatively maybe at least turn off networking while you run the tests. Or alternatively turn off iCloud. 6. When was the last time you reinstalled macOS, before or after the errors started? I reinstalled macOS a few days ago on one of my Macs and it took a couple of hours, I think.

It's entirely possible that some of my suggestions will find nothing at all, but even so, that could be used to eliminate certain suspects. Eliminating suspects is usually helpful.

3

I don't know what the issue is with your AppleScript, but that data can be decoded. It looks to me some sort of XML, much of which is this text:

<fmxmlsnippet type="FMObjectList">
  <Step enable="True" id="16" name="Go to Record/Request/Page">
    <NoInteract state="True"></NoInteract>
    <RowPageLocation value="ByCalculation"></RowPageLocation>
    <Calculation><![CDATA[$savedpos]]></Calculation>
  </Step>
</fmxmlsnippet>

I'd guess it is some sort of reference to a FileMaker object list. Certainly it is not a string, and trying to make it a string will not work.

4

thanks for the reply. Is there any record of issues between FM and KM, like setting variables from inside a Filemaker AS script? It's the most frustrating thing I've had to deal with since QuicKeys (which KM surpassed super nicely).

I don't believe it's just corrupt Filemaker data since I've not seen this kind of corruption in 20+ years of using it, and it happened in a newly made-from-scratch file, tho I did copy and paste my scripts.

Do you think there's data inside the error message? If I can find the object in question maybe I can delete it or something.

5

I do a fair amount of FM / KM / Applescripting.
I was also a QuicKeys user for many many years.
I'd be more than glad to try your script if you could trim it down to the core steps that are causing the issue and include the macro.

6

Thanks, I'll see if I can isolate things more. The main issue is there's no tellning when the color wheel of death will crop up.

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7

Did you use the KM OCR action to transcribe the screenshot of text?

8

I don't believe this is an issue with Keyboard Maestro - as far as I can see, it is a straight AppleScript/FileMaker issue.

Does your script work from ScriptEditor?

9

Yes..

10

Just an update. I seem to have gotten a handle on it, by ripping out all my Filemaker scripts and running it from KM only, putting results into Filemaker fields and never accessing KM from Applescripts inside Filemaker scripts. I'd guess that the reason for error came from criss-crossing wires or possibly memory running out, when a script in Filemaker calls to KM to store/retreive variables, and also run full scripts, which then call back to Filemaker. So I'm doing what I usually do, relying on KM for almost everything, and as usual it's working great.

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