hi all--

thanks for the feed back.

it's the latest FB, 32bit, installed 100% with all the defaults (so, not sure super / classic... it's just the default install)

i installed into C:\Firebird

i'm running CMD in C:\Firebird

I have C:\Temp and in there all there is is vk5.fbk

it's not NT 4, Fat32, nothing like that.

gbak -c c:\temp\vk5.fbk c:\temp\vk5.gdb -user nnn -pass mmmm

that then "worked" or started too...

of the 7.3 gigs, the VK5.gdb file becase 291 Megs then, it went into a continous loop with this error:

gbak: do not recognize table attribute 0 -- continuing

now... i'm just assuming the FBK file is corrupt or something?

thanks
kelly

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@...> wrote:
>
> At 04:40 AM 16/05/2012, bwc3068 wrote:
>
> >good thought...
> >
> >i tried. when i added -page_size 2048
> >
> >it came back with "page size specified (2048 bytes) rouded up to 4096.
> >
> >4096 and 8192 just returned the same original error message:
> >
> >ERROR: size specification either missing or incorrect for file vk5
>
> vk5?
>
> Anyway, that "size" message refers to file size, not page size. The default page from FB 1.5 onward is 4K, prior to that 1K. From FB 2 onward, it won't let you create pages smaller than 4K.
>
> The problem here is that, if you're not specifying secondary files, you shouldn't be seeing that message. That falls back to the ability of your filesystem to create a file. You're saying it's on an NTFS partition. Could that be an old partition that dates back to NT 4 days, with the accompanying file size limitations?
>
> Are you running Classic? and what version of Firebird?
>
> Your example is a bit sparse on syntax:
>
> gbak -c aaa.fbk aaa.gdb
>
> Remember that the backup file is just a file and needs a full file specification. The backup file can be anywhere in the filesystem, *including* a share, and has a local path.
>
> A database file is a database and should be addressed through a server location. With Classic on Windows, you need to provide the location of the server (specifically, the Services Manager) as Classic doesn't support the "Windows local" protocol. But, even if you're using Superserver, you'll still need to provide a legal location. An implicit location lands up in the current directory which, if you're running gbak from its default location in the \bin\ directory of your Firebird installation, which might not be a legal write location on recent versions of Windows.
>
> And, of course, Firebird will *not* create a database on a share.
>
> So, for a reality check, check first that the destination location for the database doesn't already have a file named aaa.gdb from a former botched attempt. If it does, delete it. Then, tell us what happens when you present the gbak command with full syntax:
>
> gbak -c -se localhost:service_mgr d:\backups\aaa.fbk d:\backups\aaa.gdb -user uname -password whatever
>
> In this example, d:\backups\aaa.fbk is a valid location for reading from or writing to a backup file, even if partition d: is a network share. But it's not valid at all as a destination location for aaa.gdb if partition d: is not a physical location controlled by the host machine. Without the -se localhost:service_mgr switch, aaa.gdb is not a valid location for a database file with Classic.
>
> ./heLen
>