Hi Didier,

> My issue is not that I cannot connect to FB, it is that FB won't even
> start. If fb was running and I was unable to connect to it then, I
> would tend to agree with you BUT how comes:
>
> - fb seems to be the only application affected (Ie I also have Sybase
> ASE 12.5, VMWare to run W2k and delphi, I browse the Internet and
> read my emails still fb won't start)
> - that reinstalling FB makes it work ? (at least for a while).

Hmmm, maybe I don't understand. Is the FB-server on your laptop? Or is
it on a server in the network? Sybase etc is on that server as well? Or
on your laptop?

If FB is on a server, could it be the server has a firewall, something
like iptables with a strong check on the originators ipnr?

> so I would love to know:
> 1- what FB uses at startup time which is network-related

AFAIK: nothing. It just sits there, listening on port 3050 (or whatever
you configured) for connections. That is, if it can get to that port. OR
it is asleep until woken up by xinetd that says hey, wake up, someone 's
knocking on your port 3050. If on a linux-server, could it be that after
installation FB itself listens to 3050 and after restart it doesn't,
waiting waiting for xinetd and that xinetd is not configured to start
FB? Don't know exactly how to check, must be a simple linux command.

> 2- what the following extra of firebird.log actually means
>
> >Quaddra (Server) Sun Jan 15 11:07:02 2006
> > > Database:
> > > operating system directive open failed
> > > Permission denied

Dunno exactly, but it might be FB doesn't have privileges to do the
things it must do. If you install FB en run it, it runs under your
privileges. If it starts as a daemon, it has its own set of privileges.

What happens if you manually, as root, start the FB server and then try
to connect?


John'