--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Stefan Heymann wrote:

>
> Hello everybody,
>
> I had a strange effect on a customer's system today. We usually deploy
> our application with a minimal Firebird client. So the application
> folder contains
> MyApp.exe and
> fbclient.dll and a few other application-related files.
> We are using the current incarnation of Firebird 2.5.2.26540, for both
> server and fbclient.
>
> Usually the app folder is shared (read-only) and people start
> MyApp.exe from their clients. This is easy to set up and works
> perfectly.
> \\myserver\myapp\MyApp.exe
>
> The installation today was on a Windows 2008 64-bit server that serves
> as a database server and serves this file share at the same time. When
> we started the application from a client, the program came up
> immediately, but the connection to the database took very long (10 to
> 20 seconds). After that, database communication was fast and normal.
>
> When I copied the folder to the local client, the connection was
> established immediately. Deactivating virus checks on the server did
> not help.
>
> When I share the folder *above* my application folder, the connection
> is also established immediately and very fast.
>
> My suspicion to what is happening here is:
>
> During connection establishment, fbclient.dll tries to load a file it
> usually finds one level above itself (firebird.conf? firebird.msg?
> firebird.log?)
>
> As my program starts from the "root" of a Share, there is no parent
> folder, but it takes some time until the OS reports that back (some
> sort of timeout when trying to access \\myserver instead of
> \\myserver\myshare ???) - so I suspect that is what takes so long.
>
> When the app folder is a sub-folder of the share, fbclient.dll
> immediately finds that empty folder one level up. As it can work
> perfectly without firebird.msg (or whatever it tries to read there),
> everything goes well from there on.
>
> Can somebody confirm that this is/was the problem?

I can confirm that fbclient.dll looks for firebird.conf at one folder
above. I don't know why it takes too long but this is something OS (or
your environment) specific. To avoid it i would try to set FIREBIRD
environment variable to the fbclient folder. It should be done before
fbclient is loaded by application.

Hope it helps,
Vlad