I recently wrote this script for like the upteenth time, so now it is on bo.codeplex.com and in my BIN directory on Windows and in my sh directory on my Mac.

Note for the scripts in this post:

• on Windows you need to execute them with run as Administrator!
• on a Mac you need to run them with sudo

Windows

restart-InterBase.cmd:

net stop IBG_gds_db
net stop IBS_gds_db
net start IBG_gds_db
net start IBS_gds_db

It restarts only the default instance.

Usually it is enough to restart the Guarduan (IBG_gds_db), but sometimes that hangs, so I restart both the Guardian and the DB service (IBS_gds_db).

You can do the same with Firebird of course, and adapt for non-default instances: just find the right service names using a script like this:

sc query

then search the output for entries matching InterBase or Firebird like these:

SERVICE_NAME: IBG_gds_db
DISPLAY_NAME: InterBase XE Guardian gds_db
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

SERVICE_NAME: IBS_gds_db
DISPLAY_NAME: InterBase XE Server gds_db
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

Mac OS X

You can find the name of your Interbase service when you look at the user-installed services:

bash-3.2$ cd /Library/StartupItems/InterBase_gds_db/
bash-3.2$ ls -l
total 16
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  636 Oct 21 15:44 InterBase_gds_db
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  204 Sep 14  2007 StartupParameters.plist
bash-3.2$ cat StartupParameters.plist
{
  Description     = "InterBase Server";
  Provides        = ("InterBase Database Server");
  Requires        = ("DirectoryServices");
  Uses            = ("Disks", "NFS");
  OrderPreference = "None";
}
bash-3.2$

You can restart the InterBase Database Server using this command:

sudo SystemStarter -vdD restart "InterBase Database Server"

The SystemStarter -vdD parameters make the output add verbose, debugging information and dependencies.
–jeroen