At 09:16 AM 16/01/2008, you wrote:

>Windows XP Pro
>
>Have downloaded the Windows FB 1.5 installer and installed as Classic.
>
>I can see the Firebird server is running in Services and I can stop and
>start it.
>
>I have a problem though with running gbak, which I did like this:
>
> gbak -c -p 4096 -v -user xxx -password yyy I:\Firebird\s6.fbk
>I:\Firebird\s6.fdb 500000 I:\Firebird\s6A.fdb 500000 I:\Firebird\s6B.fdb
>
> I is a normal (non-mapped) external HD
>
>It fails with this:
>
>gbak: opened file I:\Firebird\s6.fbk
>
>gbak: transportable backup -- data in XDR format
>
>gbak: backup file is compressed
>
>gbak: ERROR: unavailable database
>
>gbak: ERROR: failed to create database I:\Firebird\s6.fdb
>
>gbak: Exiting before completion due to errors
>
> Have tried un-installing and re-installing, but no success.
>
> Any ideas what I am doing wrong here?

Yep. You need to read the Fb 1.5 release notes and/or Quick Start Guide, where you will discover that you can't use the IPServer "local" connection protocol to connect to databases under Classic. You must use a remote protocol and invoke the service manager to perform your backup.

You can use the local loopback server ("localhost") if you are using a native command shell; if you are running your command shell as a remote desktop client, you will need to use the node name or static IP address of the server.

Here's an example (with switches and arguments broken out on separate lines for clarity):

gbak -c -se localhost:service_mgr
I:\Firebird\s6.fbk
I:\Firebird\s6.fdb 500000 I:\Firebird\s6A.fdb 500000 I:\Firebird\s6B.fdb
-p 4096
-v
-user xxx -password yyy

As a matter of curiosity, why are you restoring to multiple files on an XP system? is it because disk I: is a fat32 partition?

./heLen