fb_config Options

To run the fb_config script, use a command line similar to the following:

fb_config <option> [ <option> [...]]

The script takes one or more options on the command line:

--help: This parameter displays the list of allowed options.It should not be supplied in addition to other options.
--cflags: This option returns the list of directories where Firebird include files are stored.This is required by the C and C++ compilers to allow compiler #include directives to be correctly resolved.On my own system, this option returns ‘-I/opt/firebird/include’.
--libs: This option returns the list of directories where Firebird libraries are located and a list of those libraries that are required to be linked by the linker to create a client server Firebird application.This option returns ‘-L/opt/firebird/lib -lfbclient’ on my system.
--embedlibs: This option returns the list of directories where Firebird libraries are located and a list of those libraries that are required to be linked by the linker to create an embedded Firebird application.This option returns ‘-L/opt/firebird/lib -lfbembed’ on my system.
--bindir: On my system, this option returns ‘/opt/firebird/bin’ as the full path to the Firebird /bin directory.
--version: This option returns a three part version string made up of the concatenation of the Firebird build version, a dash, the package version, a dot and the system architecture.My own laptop Linux system returns ‘1.5.0.4290-0.i686’.

The following is a brief excerpt from a makefile which shows how to define two macros, FBFLAGS and FBLIBS, and initialise them to the correct values using fb_config.Note the use of the back tick character (`) rather than a single quote character (').

...
FBFLAGS = `fb_config --cflags`
FBLIBS = `fb_config --libs`
...

ChangeRunUser

Under Firebird 1.5 there are two versions of the changeRunUser.sh script, the one prefixed 'SS' is for Super Server installations and the one prefixed 'CS' is for Classic Server installations.In Firebird 2 onwards, the script is simply changeRunUser.sh.

Note	The script should be run as root.

The changeRunUser.sh script allows the user and group, under which the Firebird server runs, to be changed.By default, this is now the firebird user and group, however, in previous versions the Firebird server ran as the root user which is undesirable from a system security point of view and allowed databases to be created all over the file system.With the new firebird user, restrictions can be placed on where databases can be created.

The script changes the owing user and group of a number of files in the Firebird installation directory, the logfile and also the startup script /etc/rc.d.init.d/firebird which is used to start and stop the Firebird server.

docnext count = 5

ChangeRunUser.sh Parameters

To run the script, use a command line similar to the following:

changeRunUser.sh <username> <groupname>

The script takes two parameters on the command line, both of which are optional as you will be prompted if both are omitted.If you only supply one parameter, it is assumed to be the username and you will be prompted for the groupname.

username: This parameter sets the username under which the Firebird server is to run.The supplied value is validated against entries in /etc/passwd.
groupname: This parameter sets the groupname under which the Firebird server is to run.The supplied value is validated against entries in /etc/group.

The following example shows the use of changeRunUser.sh to change the owning user and group to firebird.The firebird user and group is actually the default when Firebird is installed so there is no need for you to run the script unless you have changed these details already.

# cd /opt/firebird/bin
# ./changeRunUser.sh firebird firebird
Updating /opt/firebird
Updating startup script
Completed

If you are running Firebird 2.1 or higher, there is no longer a prompt if you run this script with no parameters.The script now defaults to firebird for the user and group if you do not supply any parameters.Running the script under 2.1 gives the following:

# cd /opt/firebird/bin
# ./changeRunUser.sh
Shutting down Firebird                                                done

Change Firebird install for /opt/firebird to uid=firebird gid=firebird
(User or group options can be changed by editing this script)

Press return to continue - or ^C to abort

Updating /etc file(s)
Updating /opt/firebird
Starting Firebird                                                     done
Completed.

Warning

When this script prompts you to "Press return to continue …" any VNC sessions connected to the database server will have been killed.Please ensure that you have the server at a quiet period and not during normal running hours when you make this change.This affects Suse Linux Enterprise 10 but may affect other Linux distributions as well.

RestoreRootRunUser

Under Firebird 1.5 there are two versions of the restoreRootRunUser.sh script.The one prefixed 'SS' is for Super Server installations and the one prefixed 'CS' is for Classic Server installations.In Firebird 2 onwards, the script is simply restoreRootRunUser.sh.

Note	This script must be run as root.

This script simply restores the old style installation format whereby the Firebird Super Server runs as the root user and group.

ChangeGDSLibraryCompatibleLink

This script, changeGdsLibraryCompatibleLink.sh, is available with Classic Server installations only, and is used to change the symlink libgds.so to point to the appropriate library for the installation.There are two possible libraries that the symlink can point to:

/opt/firebird/lib/libfbclient.so for client server applications
/opt/firebird/lib/libfbembed.so for embedded server applications.

After installation, the libgds.so symlink points to the client server library by default so if you are running an embedded application, you need to run this script to point libgds.so at the embedded library instead.

Note	This script must be run as root.

The following example shows how this script is used to change from embedded server to client server use:

# cd /opt/firebird/bin
# ./changeGdsCompatibleLibraryLink.sh
For classic server there are two optional backward compatible client
libraries. These are libfbclient.so and libfbembed.so.

libfbclient.so) enables your client to be multithreaded but must
                connect to a database via a server.
libfbembed.so)  allows the client to directly open the database file,
                but does not support multithreaded access

Your current setting is:
/usr/lib/libgds.so -> /opt/firebird/lib/libfbembed.so

Which option would you like to choose (client|embed|remove)
                                                       [client] client
#

The default option is client which will recreate the symlink to the client server library, embed will recreate the symlink to the embedded server, while remove will remove the symlink altogether.

There are no messages displayed to inform you of the success of the script, however, if you run it again, you will notice the current setting should be different to that displayed when you previously ran the script.

Document history

The exact file history is recorded in the firebird-documentation git repository; see https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird-documentation

Revision History
0.1	22 Nov 2004	ND	Created as a chapter in the Command Line Utilities manual.
1.0	19 Oct 2009	ND	Updated for Firebird 2, minor changes to punctuation and then converted to a stand alone manual.
1.1	05 Jan 2010	ND	Spelling correction.
1.2	27 Apr 2010	ND	When changing the DBA password, it is no longer the case that the startup script is also amended.Other changed for version 2.1 added.
1.3	20 Jun 2020	MR	Conversion to AsciiDoc, minor copy-editing

Revision History

0.1

22 Nov 2004

Created as a chapter in the Command Line Utilities manual.

1.0

19 Oct 2009

Updated for Firebird 2, minor changes to punctuation and then converted to a stand alone manual.

1.1

05 Jan 2010

Spelling correction.

1.2

27 Apr 2010

When changing the DBA password, it is no longer the case that the startup script is also amended.Other changed for version 2.1 added.

1.3

20 Jun 2020

Conversion to AsciiDoc, minor copy-editing

License notice

The contents of this Documentation are subject to the Public Documentation License Version 1.0 (the “License”); you may only use this Documentation if you comply with the terms of this License.Copies of the License are available at https://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/pdl.pdf (PDF) and https://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/pdl.html (HTML).

The Original Documentation is titled Firebird Shell Scripts.

The Initial Writer of the Original Documentation is: Norman Dunbar.

Fb_Config Options