Robert,

> Anyway, it would be great if we could run a whole app + server + db
> stuff from that CD. If read only, then exclusive lock on database
> doesn't make any sense.

(Helen already report why the lock file is present)

But what you want is possible.

You just need to redirect the lock file to the hard disk, using a temp
folder for this. You will not need to make any change in the registry. I
don't remember if the lock file definition is already on firebird.conf or
not (we did discuss this for a while in fb-devel). If it doesn't, there are
some work around - copying some files to the hard disk before you run your
application, and clean them after you close. I know that this isn't perfect,
but you will need no more than 2 or 3Mb available on hard disk, and copy
will be fast on nowadays computers.

Let me know if this info is enough for you.

I checked an article from a friend of mine, (just in portuguese, maybe some
online translator can help you):
http://www.gladisto.hpg.ig.com.br/artigos/fb_embeded/fb_embeded.htm

He reports that the lock file will not be created if you use read only
databases. I'm not sure if he his correct or not in this point, but I do
remember that we discuss this some months ago, and I'm sure he did some
tests before publish this. So, maybe he is talking about redirecting the
lock file to hard disk, and in that case you just need to be abble to create
a small file on disk.

Artur