Hiya. Get ready for a real beginner's 1st question. This refers to Firebird 1.5 on Mac OS X. I'm just starting out with Firebird because it looks like a good way to get acquainted with the client-server paradigm, and because I'm not going to be able to keep using my 1993 version of MS FoxPro forever.

So I need to move some data from my FoxPro files into a Firebird database. I exported data from FoxPro in, I think, the right kind of text format; the file is "sample.txt."

When I tell Firebird ...
..............................................
SQL> CREATE TABLE testTable EXTERNAL FILE 'sample.txt'
CON> (
CON> NAME1 CHAR(79),
CON> IN1 CHAR(27),
... (more field specifiers) ...
CON> NEWLINE CHAR(1)
CON> );
..............................................
I always get
..............................................
Statement failed, SQLCODE = -902
Access to external file "sample.txt" is denied by server administrator
..............................................

I played around with the permissions of sample.txt and I don't think that's the issue. I think this has to do with how Firebird deals with external files in general.

The documentation seems to say it should be solvable by placing
ExternalFileAccess = Restrict
into
/Library/Frameworks/Firebird.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/English.lproj/var/
firebird.conf.
but I tried that & it didn't help (I did un-comment the line). That's where I'm stuck. I'm kinda wondering if Firebird gets its configuration in OS X differently than it does in other platforms.

Thanks for any ideas.
Will Stites