brown_oakridge wrote:

> We will need to make the binary files available system-wide, and
> for that we will edit /etc/profile, inserting the following lines
> inside :
>
> export INTERBASE_HOME=/opt/interbase
> export PATH=$PATH:$INTERBASE_HOME/bin

Very bad idea. There are a lot of tools named "isql" and your system
will just pick the one that it finds first. Since it searches the PATH
variable, Firebird's isql has the least chance, since it will be the
last one, and it will only work if it is the only isql on the system.

> In /etc/profile I actually entered:
>
> export FIREBRID_HOME=/opt/firebird
> export PATH=$PATH:$FIREBIRD_HOME/bin

FIREBRID is not the same as FIREBIRD ;)

> but this has had no effect. What am I doing wrong please? I do not
> have complete faith in Mr Chang as he is the one who left "./" off
> gsec and isql, but his piece is the only one I have.

It is ok not to have ./ if the executable is in your path. If it still
doesn't work, try just to type "export" and read the value of PATH
variable. Perhaps you just had to logoff/login.

If that doesn't work either, I suggest you to do the following:

ln -s /opt/firebird/bin/isql /usr/bin/isql
ln -s /opt/firebird/bin/gbak /usr/bin/gbak

I did that on all my systems, so I don't have to worry about it. I
actually use:

ln -s /opt/firebird/bin/isql /usr/bin/fbsql

That way I'm sure I'm using Firebird's isql, and not something else.
Just always type "fbsql" instead of "isql".

Finally, if everything fails, you can even try:

ln -s /opt/firebird/bin/isql /bin/isql
ln -s /opt/firebird/bin/gbak /bin/gbak

That one will surely work, but it's not nice to put user executables
into system bin folder.

--
Milan Babuskov
http://njam.sourceforge.net