Subject RE: [firebird-support] Accessing firebird database on LAN
Author Helen Borrie
At 06:31 PM 3/06/2007, you wrote:
>The miHotel software does not require mentioning the name of the database
>file; only it requires defining the path of the file.
>
> When I am trying to access the database file from the server where the
>database is stored using this command:
>
>192.168.1.153:C:\Program Files\SoftMI\miHotel\DB\
>
>the software loads the database file without any problem but when I am
>trying to access the database file from the client PC, I get this message
>"Missing configuration file: C:\Program Files\FirBird\aliases.conf".

This message is not coming from Firebird. The application appears to
be making the presence of aliases.conf a condition for starting
up. This isn't architecturally valid, since aliases.conf (a) lives
in the root directory of the Firebird server; (b) is not accessed by
the client application at all and (c) is optional anyway.

If your application is performing a check on the local disk for
aliases.conf then I'm afraid it appears that whoever wrote your
software did not intend for it to be used on a network. Have you
contacted the vendor at all for help with this?

>I am wondering if there is some testing to find out what is the problem as I
>have tried everything I know but no result.

Reality checks:

1) Ping the server by its hostname and check that you have the
correct IP address for it.

2) Go to the Firebird root directory and open aliases.conf in a text
editor such as Notepad. Find out the actual path of the database
file that is in there for the alias "DB\". (I must say "DB\" is a
weird alias: you should try it without the backslash as well...)

3) Copy isql.exe to a directory on the client machine. Go there,
and try to connect to the server. You will need a valid Firebird
username and password to do this, and I suggest you use the hostname
rather than the IP address.

e.g.

isql 'OurServer:C:\Program Files\SoftMI\miHotel\d:\path\to\dbfile'
-user BOSS -password 'pass$%xx'

(using valid username and password, natch!)

If you succeed, you will see this:

SQL>

./heLen