Install Firebird 1.5 Classic Server on Ubuntu 64bit

In Ubuntu versions > 8.04 you will encounter the problem that there are no more packages of Firebird 1.5 Classic Server available in the package repository. Therefore we need to install all dependencies and all packages manually. Firebird 1.5 only exists in 32bit which results in even more problems to install it. In Ubuntu you have always the possibility to install old 32bit libraries via apt-get. In this tutorial I will show you how to do just that.

Installing packages

First we will need the following packages ia32-libs, lib32ncurses5, openbsd-inetd (for Firebird). These are 32bit libraries needed for Firebird 1.5 Classic.

root@host:/# apt-get install ia32-libs lib32ncurses5 openbsd-inetd

But this is still not enough to satisfy Firebird, it still needs version 5.x of http://gcc.gnu.org/libstdc++/ which isn't included in Ubuntu > 8.04 anymore. We will need to get our hands a little dirty and install this librarie by hand. First go get the lib from ubuntu's package repository website at http://packages.ubuntu.com. Once you have transfered the file to your host continue doing the following to extract the data from the deb file.

Updated 03.02.2011:

The link to the packages.ubuntu.com site isn't working anymore, here is a new link to the libstdc++5 i386 library file http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gcc-3.3/libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb.

root@host:~# ar xv libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb
root@host:~# tar xzvf data.tar.gz

All extracted from the debian package, now let's control if it is really a 32bit File, if so we will install it to our systems 32bit library directory.

root@host:~# cd usr/lib/
root@host:/usr/lib# file libstdc++.so.5.0.7
libstdc++.so.5.0.7: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped

The output of '''file''' seems to be correct, it reports a 32bit file so we can go ahead.

root@host:~/usr/lib# install libstdc++.so.5.0.7 /usr/lib32/
root@host:~/usr/lib# cd /usr/lib32/
root@host:/usr/lib32# ln -s libstdc++.so.5.0.7 libstdc++.so.5

Now we are good to go we have all the needed libraries to install Firebird 1.5 Classic Server.

Install Firebird 1.5 Classic Server

Go to the Firebird website and download the following file FirebirdCS-1.5.6.5026-0.i686.tar.gz. Put that file onto your host and extract it.

root@host:~# tar xzvf FirebirdCS-1.5.6.5026-0.i686.tar.gz
root@host:~# cd FirebirdCS-1.5.6.5026-0.i686
root@host:~# ./install.sh``

One last thing, /opt/firebird/bin is still not in our PATH, so let's add it. Open up /etc/profile and add the following line to the end of the file.

PATH=$PATH:/opt/firebird/bin

Test your firebird connection using one of the following commands...

root@host:~# isql -user SYSDBA -pass yourpasswd localhost:employees

or

root@host:~# telnet localhost 3050

There you go you should have Firebird 1.5 32bit running on your 64bit Server. Next post I will explain you how to install multiple firebird server instances on one machine.