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Installing Firebird

The instructions given below for the installation of Firebird on Windows and Linux should be sufficient for the vast majority of cases.However, if you experience problems or if you have special needs not covered here, be sure to read the Release Notes.This is especially important if you are upgrading from a previous version or if there are remnants of an old (and maybe long gone) InterBase or Firebird installation floating around your system (DLLs, Registry entries, environment variables…​)

Installation kits

At the Firebird website, https://firebirdsql.org, the installation kits have names like:

Firebird-5.0.0.bbbb-p-windows-x64.exe

Windows executable installer, 64 bits

Firebird-5.0.0.bbbb-p-windows-x64.zip

Windows zip kit for manual installation

Firebird-5.0.0.bbbb-p-windows-x86.exe

Windows executable installer, 32 bits

Firebird-5.0.0.bbbb-p-linux-x64.tar.gz

Linux compressed tarball

Firebird-5.0.0.bbbb-p-macos-x64.pkg

Mac OS-X 64-bit package

...where bbbb is the build number (e.g. 1227 for Firebird 5.0.0 Release Candidate 1) and p the packaging number (usually 0 or another low one-digit number).

Firebird 5 packages will also undoubtedly wind up in various Linux distributions and their online repositories.These will have their own naming schemes.

Before installation

Tip

If you’re installing Firebird on a system where Firebird has never been installed, you can skip this section.

It is almost always advisable to uninstall any previous Firebird installations completely (after you’ve read the next paragraph!) and also hunt the Windows system dirs for old copies of gds32.dll and fbclient.dll.If you’re using Linux, the uninstall scripts should have removed any copies and/or symlinks in /usr/lib[64], but it won’t hurt to look if anything named libfbclient.* or libgds.* is still lying around.

Furthermore, you should be aware that Firebird 5 can open Firebird 4 databases, and even upgrade them, from ODS 13.0 to ODS 13.1, but won’t open databases that were created by Firebird 3 or older.So, before taking down your existing setup, you should back up all your databases in order that you can restore them later under Firebird 5.

Upgrading the security database from Firebird 3 and higher
  1. Backup your security3.fdb or security4.fdb

    gbak -user sysdba -b {path}security4.fdb security4.fbk
    # or using the security.db alias
    gbak -user sysdba -b security.db securitydb.fbk
    # or using XNET (Windows only)
    gbak -user sysdba -pas masterkey -b xnet://security.db securitydb.fbk
    Note

    You can only perform a local (embedded or XNET) backup of the security database;embedded mode requires filesystem access rights to the database file;XNET (Windows only) requires username and password.

  2. (only after backing up all your databases) Install Firebird 5 (see later sections)

  3. Note down the permissions, ownership and filesystem access rights of security5.fdb

  4. Rename the existing security5.fdb for safekeeping

  5. Restore the backup of the first step as the security database

    gbak -user sysdba -c security4.fbk {path}security5.fdb
    # or using the security.db alias
    gbak -user sysdba -c securitydb.fbk security.db

    Contrary to the backup scenario, using XNET is not an option to restore the security database (as this would require the security database to exist, and it would lock the file).

  6. Change filesystem access rights/permissions to match the original security5.fdb

For a Firebird 4 security database, it is also possible to copy the security4.fdb to security5.fdb and use gfix -upgrade to upgrade from ODS 13.0 to ODS 13.1, but we recommend using the backup and restore route (if only so you have a backup as a fallback).

Upgrading the security database from Firebird 2.5 and earlier

Back up your old security database security2.fdb.Firebird 5 comes with a SQL script security_database.sql (located in misc/upgrade/v3.0) that will recreate users in the Firebird 5 security database, preserving all information except SYSDBA's and except any passwords.For more information, see doc/README.security_database.txt in your Firebird 5 installation directory, or Compatibility Issues :: Upgrading a v.2.x Security Database in the Firebird 3.0 Release Notes.