Hi Simon,

Welcome aboard.

However, unless you are using one of the packages from the
firebird.sourceforge.net or www.ibphoenix.com (.rpm, .tar.gz) or
compiling yourself from sources (in a non-Gentoo fashion), you are
(probably) expecting too much of people here. You need to at least
tell people which version of Firebird you are using (there are
changes in file extension between 1.0x and 1.5).

If I understand correctly, in emerging Firebird on Gentoo you are
effectively running a compile of someone else's package. If the
information I give you below does not work (or you find that other
items mentioned in the documentation are missing) I would suggest you
contact whoever maintains that Gentoo package.

To test your installation you need to locate employee.gdb (or
employee.fdb). If you can run the isql executable in
the /opt/firebird/bin directory, once inside that you should be able
to connect with this line:
connect '/path/to/employee.gdb' user sysdba password masterkey;

[Watch out that you are not running isql from a unixODBC
installation - do 'which isql' to locate which isql your shell will
run.]

If you _can_ connect then the _most basic_ functionality has been
properly installed. If your machine is open to the internet the
first thing to do is to change the sysdba password (as it is well
known).

You can get documentation for the old InterBase from the Borland
site, or buy documentation from www.ibphoenix.com, or even help to
write documentation for Gentoousers, if you are so inclined :-)

Hope this helps...

Bernard

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "si1356" <si1356@y...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've just emerged Firebird onto my Gentoo system...
>
> How do I start the database server? /etc/init.d/firebird references
> ibmgr, but I ain't got one of them, and this is Firebird anyhow
right?
> None of the exes in /opt/firebird/bin seem to have any man pages,
the
> help directory contains a database (???).. so it doesn't and there's
> not a readme in sight! Appreciate anyone who can point me to the
> relevant HOWTO if it exists, 'cos this is all making me feel
extremely
> stupid (even more so than usual grrr...)
>
> thanks,
>
> -Simon.