Multiple Firebird Servers on Ubuntu

In this tutorial I will show you how to install multiple separate Firebird 2.1 servers on a single Host, lets just say you are short on budget and you want to have your testing/integration database running on the same environment as your production database, which is usually not preferable, but in some weird cases you find yourself needing such a setup. Or for instance you have a number of production environments and you want to have them a bit seperated from each other saying you want to be able to kill all open sessions of a certain production environment, sometimes this can be very useful but like I said usually you shouldn't really do this. But anyways I was asked once to do exactly such a setup and I wanted to share my knowledge on how to do exactly this with Firebird 2.1, the same procedure should also be adaptable to other versions of Firebird as long as you want to use Classic Server. Mixing different version should also work cause the required libraries will all be isolated in single directories.

When the setup is done you will have two separate Firebird 2.1 installations one which I will call firebird01 and one which i will call firebird02 with two different fb_inet_server executables to distinguish them further more, fb_inet_server01 and fb_inet_server02. Firebird01 will listen on standard firebird port 3050 and firebird02 will listen on 3060. Here a little overview of what we want to accomplish.

Step 1 - Download / Install

Instead of using ubuntus repositories we are going to do a manual setup, which gives us a bit more flexibility in terms of which versions we want to use. To get started go to the offical Firebird site and download the desired package, I chose FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686.tar.gz. Next we will need libstdc++5 in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick they are available through the standard repositories, so just use apt-get.

root@host:/# apt-get install libstdc++5

Now let's extract the FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686.tar.gz package which we've just downloaded. Inside this package you will find a file called buildroot.tar.gz, this file holds all the files needed to get the Firebird 2.1 server up and running. After extracting FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686.tar.gz extract FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/buildroot.tar.gz, and finally copy the FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/opt/firebird over to /opt/firebird01.

root@host:/root# tar xzvf FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686.tar.gz
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/tarMainInstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/postuninstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/preinstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/preuninstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/taruninstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/postinstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/tarinstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/rpmfiles.txt
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/tarMainUninstall.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/scripts/rpmheader.txt
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/install.sh
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/buildroot.tar.gz
FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/manifest.txt
root@host:/root# cd FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686/
root@host:/root/FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686# tar xzvf buildroot.tar.gz
./
./opt/
./opt/firebird/
./opt/firebird/misc/
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/ib_udf/
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/ib_udf/ib_udf_upgrade.sql
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/ib_udf/ib_udf2_params.txt
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/ib_udf/ib_udf_params.txt
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/metadata/
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/metadata/metadata_charset.txt
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/metadata/metadata_charset_drop.sql
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/metadata/metadata_charset_create.sql
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/security/
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/security/security_database.sql
./opt/firebird/misc/upgrade/security/security_database.txt
./opt/firebird/misc/intl.sql
./opt/firebird/misc/firebird.xinetd
./opt/firebird/UDF/
./opt/firebird/UDF/ib_udf.sql
./opt/firebird/UDF/ib_udf.so
./opt/firebird/UDF/fbudf.sql
./opt/firebird/UDF/ib_udf2.sql
./opt/firebird/UDF/fbudf.so
./opt/firebird/WhatsNew
./opt/firebird/aliases.conf
....... TOO MUCH OUTPUT .......
root@host:/root/FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686# mkdir /opt/firebird01
root@host:/root/FirebirdCS-2.1.3.18185-0.i686# cp -R opt/firebird/* /opt/firebird01/

Now you have your first firebird directory created, we can check if the dependencies for lifbclient.so are met and so on therefore go into the directory you've just created /opt/firebird01/lib and run ldd against libfbclient.so.2.1.3 if you get an output with no ouput saying not found you are good.

root@host:/opt/firebird01/lib# ldd libfbclient.so.2.1.3
    linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0x00635000)
    libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00110000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x006f9000)
    libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x00a46000)
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00281000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x0029b000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00f59000)

We need to add a new user called firebird which we will use to run the firebird server, to do so do the following.

root@host:/# groupadd firebird
root@host:/# useradd -d /opt/firebird01 -s /bin/false -c "Firebird Database Owner" -g firebird firebird

Step 2 - Setup first environment

Firebird needs to have a default password set for the SYSDBA user which is basically the admin user of the Firebird Server. We have to set this one up, therefore do the following.

root@host:/opt/firebird01/lib# export FIREBIRD=/opt/firebird01/
root@host:/opt/firebird01/lib# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/firebird01/lib/
root@host:/opt/firebird01/lib# cd ../bin
root@xubuntu:/opt/firebird01/bin# ./gsec
GSEC> modify SYSDBA -pw masterkey
Warning - maximum 8 significant bytes of password used
GSEC> quit

Now as we have one working environment setup we just make a copy of it.

root@host:/opt# cd /opt
root@host:/opt# cp firebird01/ firebird02/ -R

Final but last modification in this step, changing the names of the executables in both directories.

root@host:/opt# mv firebird01/bin/fb_inet_server firebird01/bin/fb_inet_server01
root@host:/opt# mv firebird02/bin/fb_inet_server firebird02/bin/fb_inet_server02

So let's move on to the next step, setting up xinetd to start the right server depending on which port the server receives incoming connections.

Step 3 - Xinetd

Now we have two seperate intallation of Firebird 2.1.3 Classic Server. The next step will be to setup xinetd to associate different ports with the different Firebird Servers.

Xinetd is a connection manager a so called Super Internet Server which will launch a specified server only when a user is trying to connect to a specified port. So let's say you have an ftp server set up which should be listening on port 21. When a connection is being made to the port 21, xinetd will be launching the service associated with the port 21. In the following example it will be clear to you what will happen.

Let's first create the firebird service entry. Therefore open up /etc/services. Remove the following two lines

gds_db          3050/tcp                        # InterBase server
gds_db          3050/udp

Add these two lines to the end of the file.

# Local services
firebird01        3050/tcp                        # Firebird01 2.1
firebird01        3050/udp
firebird02        3060/tcp                        # Firebird02 2.1
firebird02        3060/udp

Now we'll have to specify what xinetd should start when a connection attempt is being made to port 3050 or 3060. Therefore we'll have to create two files /etc/xinet.d/firebird01 and /etc/xinet.d/firebird2 which will hold the definitions for xinetd for these services.

service firebird01
{
        flags                   = REUSE
        socket_type             = stream
        wait                    = no
        user                    = firebird
        server                  = /opt/firebird01/bin/fb_inet_server01
        env                     =FIREBIRD=/opt/firebird01
        env                    +=LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/firebird01/lib:LD_LIBRARY_PATH
        disable                 = no
}

service firebird02
{
        flags                   = REUSE
        socket_type             = stream
        wait                    = no
        user                    = firebird
        server                  = /opt/firebird02/bin/fb_inet_server02
        instances               = UNLIMITED
        env                     =FIREBIRD=/opt/firebird02
        env                    +=LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/firebird02/lib:LD_LIBRARY_PATH
        disable                 = no
}

Okey, so we have the services ports defined in /etc/services and we've got two xinetd definitions in /etc/xinetd.d/ so to see if you have setup everything correctly for xinetd you can try to restart xinetd and take a look at the log xinetd creates in /var/log/daemon.log, if you see a line saying 2 available services you 've done good and you didn't do any mistakes in the syntax.

root@host:/# /etc/init.d/xinetd restart
 * Stopping internet superserver xinetd                                                 [ OK ]
 * Starting internet superserver xinetd                                                 [ OK ]
root@host:/# tail -f /var/log/daemon.log
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing daytime
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing daytime
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing discard
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing discard
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing echo
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing echo
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing time
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: removing time
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: xinetd Version 2.3.14 started with libwrap loadavg options compiled in.
Feb 18 19:28:49 xubuntu xinetd[19919]: Started working: 2 available services

The only one thing left now is the firebird.conf file where we need to adjust which port firebird should listen on, so as you would have guessed it we need to assign 3050 to firebird01 's config file and 3060 to firebird02 's config file.

In /opt/firebird01/firebird.conf change

   # RemoteServicePort = 3050

to

RemoteServicePort = 3050

In /opt/firebird02/firebird.conf change

   # RemoteServicePort = 3050

to

RemoteServicePort = 3060

Alright that should it, you can try to connect to you two seperate firebird servers using telnet, if you get something like the following you are good, try to assign different databases in aliases.conf to the different Firebird servers and try to connect either by using port 3050 or 3060.

root@host:/# telnet localhost 3050
Trying ::1...
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.``

Connection closed by foreign host
root@host:/# telnet localhost 3060
Trying ::1...
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

Connection closed by foreign host

All done and all working just fine. I hope this tutorial helps anybody having to do the same setup I was asked to do, and I would be grateful if you could comment on your experiences or if you have any sugguestions or questions on this tutorial. May the bird be with you!