Network related problems with FrameMaker

• Open is very slow
• Save problems
• PDF problems
• File can not be accessed

Opening files is very slow

Q: Would anyone have any idea why if I open FM files from my network drive, some files, regardless of their size, will take up to two minutes to open, as opposed to opening instantly from my hard drive? The only thing I noticed about the difference in the files is that the ones that take longer to open, have a lot of cross ref's. [2008-02-26 Orly Zimmerman]

A: In addition to network and server speed and throughput issues, all the cross refs and graphics in the files are being resolved. And depending on how your computer and/or network is set up, the files are being validated and virus-checked. [Art Campbell, gmail.com]

Q: While your responses are accurate, they do not explain why the files can be opened on my colleagues PC's network drive in under 10 seconds, but not on my network drive. According to IT my network connections and setup is OK and they suspect the trouble in FM. Is there a specific FM config option that may be slowing down the files that I could check? [2008-02-27 Orly Zimmerman]

FrameMaker can't save file …

«Last night I wanted to save the main chapter of my thesis, but after some time an error message popped up stating that FrameMaker can't save the document. At the end of the file name there was a 3-digit suffix. At the next trial this suffix had changed. After some trials I succeeded with the save. Can you tell me what happened and how to avoid this situation?»

«I have numerous FM 6.0 books and I am now using FM7.2. Whenever I open/modify and save a file now I get the following message.
'The document was saved to a temporary file, but FrameMaker cannot rename it to have the correct name. The newer version has an odd suffix.'»

How FM handles automatic saves

Let's say, you have specified Automatic Save Every 5 minutes and your file is named stressfile.fm.

After you have done a modification to the file stressfile.fm F M starts its timer and after 5 minutes it will create a file stressfile.auto.fm.xxx where xxx are three hexadecimal digits (000 to FFF). After this has been saved completely, the probably existing file stressfile.auto.fm is deleted and stressfile.auto.fm.xxx is renamed to stressfile.auto.fm.

Normally you can not observe this behaviour, because modern computers are too fast and your files are too small to take significant time when saved. However, if you save to a network, network congestion may slow down the save process significantly. It may even happen that FrameMaker gets a time out from the network and hence issues the message:

Framemaker can't write the file stressfile.auto.fm.xxx to disk. or

The document was saved to a temporary file, but FrameMaker can't rename it to have the correct name. The newer version has an odd suffix.

Network issues

• The first thing to clear is whether you really have write acces to that network drive
• Network congestion may slow down everything. Is someone updating the server?
• Do your file naming conventions (File > Preferences > General) match the type of server? This is not an issue, if you have previously read this file from the server.
• Has AntiVirus software been installed on the server? This may slow down any writing to the server significantly.

Large files in FrameMaker

Large files are handled by FrameMaker with ease. FrameMaker is designed for that. Hence the above mentioned effect is independent of file size – except when saving to a network. Then also opening the file may be significantly delayed and importing of graphics from the network may also cause headache.

I have tested this with a huge (in FM terms) file of 50 MB on my old laptop which is sufficiently slow to notice the effect. I created this large file with images copied into the file (rather than referenced), added some weird tables and multiplied the contents several times.

Antivirus software on your workstation

The problem has also been observed with AV software installed on the workstation from which you try to save the FM to the network. The AV software may be set to check everything leaving the workstation. This may create a significant delay and hence a timeout in FM.

If this is the case, the fix is to either turn off your AV software, or create a 'no scan' zone that includes your FrameMaker files. [Steve Rickaby 2006-08-30, wordmongers.demon.co.uk]

PDF problems

Gillian Flato wrote [2007-01-26]:

I get the following message:

"Adobe PDF" cannot access the file because it is un use by another application or process:
G:\\blih\blah\bloh\mypdf.pdf
Verify that the file is not open by another application or process and try again. 

It's weird because no one else is accessing the file and it's not open by any other program.

My IT guy looked at the file and said that there was no security info on it. The only way he could break the link to the PDF so I could delete it was to reboot the server. I am working on a network drive.

It turns out that the files are on the network. Working local and copying the results to the network solved the problem.

File can not be accessed

Files could not be accessed on a central file server for a random period of time. A message about the user not having access to this file was displayed in a dialog box.

Resolution: Looking on the server's Computer Management console > System Tools >Shared Folders > Open Files list, we noticed that the inaccessible files were always "accessed by" another user than the actual person working on the files.

The Open Mode was "no access". We then concentrated on this person's machine and found that she had Windows Search activated and the network share containing the incriminated files had been added to the list of locations that should be indexed ... Obviously, whenever one of FrameMaker's lck and fm files was modified, Windows Search grabbed it and put a lock onto it in order to be able to index it properly. This in turn made it impossible for FrameMaker to correctly save the file.  Removing the network share from the list of indexed locations, resolved our problem of inaccessible files.

Recommendation: Don't use Windows Search (or other services that lock files) on directories that contain FrameMaker files, or at least explicitly exclude fm and lck files.

[Jakob Fix gmail_com 2009-10-20]