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I can’t find a good method to install Firebird ver. 2.5 or ver. 3.0.

Is this possible? If so how?

According to the Official Ubuntu Documentation

Firebird stable 2.5.x is located into this repository (ppa) for LTS and current supported Ubuntu releases

The ppa repository must be added this way

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mapopa

Then you need to update the cache repository

sudo apt-get update

Here is how you can inspect the firebird2.5 related packages

apt-cache search firebird2.5-*

Install the super server package (you will be asked about the SYSDBA password and what service to enable : Super Server, Classic or Super Classic )

sudo apt-get install firebird2.5-super

The following extra packages will be installed:

  firebird2.5-common firebird2.5-common-doc firebird2.5-dev firebird2.5-server-common libfbclient2 libib-util

Suggested packages:

  libfbembed2.5 firebird2.5-examples firebird2.5-doc

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  firebird2.5-server-common firebird2.5-super

The following packages will be upgraded:

  firebird2.5-common firebird2.5-common-doc firebird2.5-dev libfbclient2 libib-util

5 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 21 not upgraded.

Need to get 5,442kB of archives.

After this operation, 11.3MB of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y

Or install Classic or Super Classic if you have more than one cpu (dual core or SMP machine) and want SMP support

sudo apt-get install firebird2.5-classic

or

sudo apt-get install firebird2.5-superclassic

You need to configure the package after is installed

sudo dpkg-reconfigure firebird2.5-super

Install the examples and dev files

sudo apt-get install firebird2.5-examples firebird2.5-dev 

The employee.fdb archive will be under this dir /usr/share/doc/firebird2.1-examples/examples/empbuild/

cd /usr/share/doc/firebird2.5-examples/examples/empbuild/

sudo gunzip employee.fdb.gz

sudo chown firebird.firebird employee.fdb

sudo mv employee.fdb /var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/

Connect to database using the isql-fb console





$ isql-fb

SQL> connect "/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/employee.fdb " user 'SYSDBA' password 'SYSDBApassword';

always use localhost: in front of db path when using classic or superclassic in 2.5 this way the lock files and the shared memory segment will be owned by the 'firebird' user. Another alternative is to add yourself to firebird group

$ sudo adduser `id -un` firebird

Then connect to the db in superclassic or classic

$ isql-fb

SQL> connect "localhost:/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/employee.fdb " user 'SYSDBA' password 'SYSDBApassword';

If all is ok then you will have the message with what database connected and what user and ready to use sql prompt

Database:  "/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/employee.fdb ", User: SYSDBA

SQL> 

Now you can check the server version and the tables

SQL> show tables;

       COUNTRY                                CUSTOMER

       DEPARTMENT                             EMPLOYEE

       EMPLOYEE_PROJECT                       JOB

       PROJECT                                PROJ_DEPT_BUDGET

       SALARY_HISTORY                         SALES



SQL> show version;

ISQL Version: LI-V2.5.0.* Firebird 2.5

Server version:

Firebird/linux Intel (access method), version "LI-V2.5.0.* Firebird 2.5"

Firebird/linux Intel (remote server), version "LI-V2.5.0.* Firebird 2.5/tcp (eeepc)/P11"

Firebird/linux Intel (remote interface), version "LI-V2.5.0.* Firebird 2.5 Release Candidate 2/tcp (eeepc)/P11"

on disk structure version 11.1

To create a new database

SQL> create database "/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/first_database.fdb" user 'SYSDBA' password 'SYSDBAPASSWORD';

SQL> connect "/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/first_database.fdb" user 'SYSDBA' password 'masterkey';

Commit current transaction (y/n)?y

Committing.

Database:  "/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/first_database.fdb", User: SYSDBA

SQL>

If you want to create a simple table then insert 1-2 rows and select from it here is one example

SQL> CREATE TABLE TEST (ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, NAME VARCHAR(20));

SQL> show tables;

       TEST

SQL> INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (1, 'John');

SQL> INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (2, 'Joe');

SQL> select * from test;



          ID NAME                 

============ ==================== 

           1 John                 

           2 Joe 

To quit the isql-fb console type quit

SQL> quit

CON>; 

For a good open source GUI admin tool you might check the flamerobin administration tool included in ubuntu repository can be installed by an simple

sudo apt-get install flamerobin

Then use it from the menu Applications->Programming-> FlameRobin

To use firebird with php , you will need the php5 driver

sudo apt-get install php5-interbase libapache2-mod-php5

sudo php5enmod interbase

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Next if you need to install an php administration tool like Firebird Web Admin

sudo apt-get install git-core

git clone git://github.com/mariuz/firebirdwebadmin.git 

mv firebirdwebadmin /var/www/html/firebirdwebadmin

and load it in the browser http://localhost/firebirdwebadmin