Windows Server Setup
Go Up to Multi-Instance
Start the server as an application with the following switches on a Windows machine.
ibserver -a -p service_name -i interbase_env_variable
The service_name is the entry contained in the services file pointing to the port number which the InterBase server should bind to. Below is an example of a part of the file from the <system directory>\drivers\etc\services file.
gds_db 3050/tcp #default interbase port number ib__a 3051/tcp # A's interbase port number
The InterBase environment variable or the -i switch is used for local connections. These values determines which InterBase server a client on the same machine will connect to. The InterBase environment variable for a client and server's -i switch must match to have a successful connection. So if InterBase server is started with the setting:
ibserver -a -p ib__a -i C:\Embarcadero\InterBase
The InterBase server will accept remote connections on the TCP/IP port number 3051 as the service ib__a is set to port 3051. The local connections will be accepted from client on the same machine who have their InterBase environment variable set to C:\Program Files\interbase.
Older versions of InterBase servers (pre-7.5) can still run using the default setting. These pre-7.5 InterBase servers will accept remote connections on TCP/IP port number 3050. The local connections will be accepted when the client uses a pre-7.5 interbase client library.
We recommend using the -i switch to set the local InterBase variable for the server. The order in which InterBase server looks for the InterBase environment variable is as follow; Command line argument '-i', InterBase environment variable setting, InterBase Registry key setting, Server's current directory.