At 12:54 PM 13/08/2003 +0200, you wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm trying to install firebird on a webserver that has suse linux 8.1
>pre-installed. I've tried the following firebird versions:
>FirebirdCS-1.0.2.908-1.i386.rpm
>FirebirdCS-1.0.3.972-0.i386.rpm
>FirebirdCS-1.5.0.3773-RC5.i686.rpm
>
>I uninstalled previous versions with YaST2. Then I did "rpm --install
><package file>".
>
> >From a SSH console I can connect locally using this ISQL command:
>connect /usr/local/firebird/examples/employee.gdb;
>
>But if I put "localhost" or the server's ip address in front of the
>connection string I get the message
>"failed to establish a connection, connection actively refused". I get the
>same error when connecting from a windows machine using Jason's IB_SQL.

It would not be possible to use "localhost" as the server name if
connecting from a remote client (such as IB_SQL or isql running on a
Windows machine). If you do not have DHCP running in your network, you
will need to place the host IP address in the HOSTS file on the
client. For example, here I have IB_SQL connecting to Firebird servers on
two Linux hosts. In the HOSTS file I have the following entries:

10.12.13.3 coolduck # the Mandrake box
10.12.13.5 mini # the RedHat box

The server needs to know its own IP address. That should have been done as
a step during your installation, but you can go and do it with YaST2.

Now, getting back to local loopback server - for e.g. connecting with isql
on the server machine. Check your hosts file and make certain that you
have a hosts entry there for it:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain

>Specifying username and password doesn't help neither.

If you are trying to make a remote connection, you will need username and
password. Note that the SYSDBA password might not be 'masterkey'. If you
don't recall setting a password during installation, then it will be set to
a special one that was generated during installation. Go to
/usr/local/firebird and open the file SYSDBA.password with pico or another
text editor to see what it is. In the /bin directory you will find the
changeDBAPassword.sh script which you can run in place
(./changeDBAPassword.sh) if need be.

>I don't have any firewall running on the server. The problem seems to be
>that the server process isn't started but I don't know why. I've checked the
>config files for inetd and xinetd and they look exactly like it's described in
>the readme file. The server process won't start even after a reboot of the
>linux machine.

On Classic, there is no server process to start. xinetd runs, and listens
for connection requests. It will start up one fb_inet_server process for
each individual connection, on an as-required basis.

>I've followed all steps in the README.user.troubleshooting file but I still
>cannot connect using a hostname or ip address in the connection string.

That readme is pretty old...

heLen