Yves Glodt wrote:

> I want to make periodic checks whether an FB server is running or not
> (the FB service and thus the box itself as well).
>
> Is there a way to connect to port 3050 and send a specifiy string or
> packet and get a well defined answer (to see if server is alive or not)?

Check out nagios plugin I wrote. It's small and simple, you can ask for
server version which has zero overhead:

http://fbexport.sourceforge.net/nagios.html

Of course, you can get more info for some of the databases if you wish.

--
Milan Babuskov
http://fbexport.sourceforge.net
http://www.flamerobin.org