At 08:48 AM 21/12/2006, Ken Porter wrote:

>I am a beginner Firebird user. I downloaded and installed "Firebird-
>2.0.0.12748-0-Win32.exe" on W2K3 SP1 32bit Standard Edition.
>
>I ran ISQL and attempted the following code as a test:
>SQL> create database 'c:\test.fdb' page_size 8192
>CON> user 'SYSDBA' password 'masterkey';
>
>and it returns:
>Statement failed, SQLCODE = -904
>unavailable database
>
>I saw a similar post with a response indicating that I should ensure
>that the service is running. While I am unfamiliar with any code to
>do so, I checked under control-panel services and there is a FireBird
>Server - DefaultInstance that showes "Started"
>
>I would gladly supply additional information, but as I am unfamiliary
>with Firebird I do not know .
>
>Any assistance would be appreciated, thanks,

It's a question of protocol. The connection path you used is for a
protocol named IPServer (usually called "Windows local"). It is a
network emulation protocol running in a subsystem called XNET.

If you are running isql from a terminal (even located on the same
machine) then IPServer is not available. You need to use a TCP/IP
connection, the path syntax for which would be:

servername:c:\test.fdb

Every machine has a 'local loopback server' for TCP/IP, which has the
IP address 127.0.0.1. Depending on how you have XP and your network
configured, you can access this server locally (i.e. only from the
machine that is running the Firebird service) as 'localhost'.

localhost:c:\test.fdb

You might have a similar difficulty with localhost, in which case,
first try the IP address instead:

127.0.0.1:c:\test.fdb

If this, too, is unavailable, then use your local machine's network
hostname (which you can find out by reading the Properties sheet from
the right-click menu of the My Computer icon). For example, one of
my Windows machines has the hostname 'fluffy', with the IP address
10.1.1.7. To create a database locally on fluffy, I would use either
of the following as my connection path:

fluffy:c:\test.fdb

or

10.1.1.7:c:\test.fdb

Don't be tempted to use any sharename or mapped drive name: it won't work.

./heLen