At 05:30 PM 12/09/2005 +0000, you wrote:

>I had a similar problem on Windows 2003 Server today. I
>got "Unavailable database" for just about everything I tried. I
>happened onto this thread and tried adding localhost: anywhere I
>specified a path and it did indeed work.
>
>So...WHY??? What problem am I actually working around? This is the
>only machine I've ever had to do this on.

Do what? If this is Classic on Windows, you cannot use the Windows local
connect to connect to any database, the security database included. There's
no "workaround" - it's the way this particular architecture is.

Therefore, since you have to use a network method to connect to Classic,
you also need to use the remote syntax for GSEC, which requires you to name
the security database file and to supply the sysdba user name and password.

So, on the local machine, for TCP/IP local loopback:

gsec -database localhost:c:\Program
Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\security.fdb -user sysdba -password mysecret

Or, if you're using Windows named pipes you could try:

gsec -database MyServer\\c:\Program
Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\security.fdb -user sysdba -password mysecret

MyServer has to be the hard node name of the server (not a share or a
mapping). But named pipes for a local connection won't work on all setups
and I have no idea whether it works on WS2003. I don't know of any
equivalent in WNET for the TCP/IP local loopback server.

./heLen