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MBS Plugin for FileMaker Linux Server on ARM

The new 2023 version of the FileMaker platform includes server support for Linux on ARM with Ubuntu 22.

A brief history: We built software for Raspberry Pi for years and even started preparing the 64-bit branch for it years ago. Since we saw the train going to ARM, we started in November 2021 to prepare our MBS Plugin for Linux on ARM. Starting early gave us time to walk over all our used libraries and build them for the new platform and make all the changes in our code as needed.

Since spring 2022 we regularly build the Linux for ARM plugin with our normal building process. Just making sure it links and no compiler error prevents this. We made a dummy app and a dummy FMWrapper.so for this, so we could even test the plugin loading and see whether it shows any errors.

Since the end of 2022 we had the luck to get access to beta versions from Claris, so we started building the plugin for the test servers and we made a few more changes to adjust various code parts, e.g. for file paths.

With MBS Plugin 13.2, we will include the Linux on ARM folder with our plugin. Until then, you find a new plugin file here: monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/. The 13.2pr4 version includes the new Linux ARM plugin.

Basically you can drop in MBS Plugin and everything should just work. The best may be to wait until the installer script creates the folders and then copy MBS.fmx into the three folders:

sudo cp MBS.fmx /opt/FileMaker/FileMaker\ Server/Database\ Server/Extensions/
sudo cp MBS.fmx /opt/FileMaker/FileMaker\ Server/Web\ Publishing/publishing-engine/cwpc/Plugins/
sudo cp MBS.fmx /opt/FileMaker/FileMaker\ Server/Web\ Publishing/publishing-engine/wip/Plugins/

When admin console starts, you can enable plugins for all three areas, Script Engine, Web Publishing and Data API. If the plugin doesn't show up as installed plugin, you need to restart the script engine in Terminal:

fmsadmin restart fmse

Reload the page in the admin console and the MBS Plugin should show and you can enable it. If the plugin doesn't enable, you may have the Intel version. Currently the Intel version is about 57 MB, while the ARM version is about 61 MB big.

You can check on the Terminal with the file command and you may see for the ARM version:

> file MBS.fmx
MBS.fmx: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ARM aarch64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, 
interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, with debug_info, not stripped

versus the Intel version:

>file MBS.fmx 
MBS.fmx: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, 
interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=eb9b4a4cddba389d6d577f32acfaba055cec010d, with debug_info, not stripped

The architecture can be seen with ARM aarch64 vs. x86-64, even if the other values may change.

Please try the plugin and let us know.

26 04 23 - 09:41