I have updated the tutorial for Firebird 2.1 classic and Ubuntu Karmic koala http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=1338 sudo apt-get install firebird2.1-dev I have installed latest DBI wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.609.tar.gz tar -zxvf DBI-1.609.tar.gz cd DBI-1.609 perl Makefile.PL sudo make install Then install the Firebird driver wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/E/ED/EDPRATOMO/DBD-InterBase-0.48.tar.gz tar -zxvf DBD-InterBase-0.48.tar.gz cd DBD-InterBase-0.48 perl Makefile.PL make make test (optional step) make install