Other things you need

A network address for the server

If you are on a managed network, get the server's IP address from your system administrator.
If you have a simple network of two machines linked by a crossover cable, you can set up your server with any IP address you like except 127.0.0.1 (which is reserved for a local loopback server) and, of course, the IP address which you are using for your client machine. If you know the “native” IP addresses of your network cards, and they are different, you can simply use those.
If you are intending to try out a single-machine installation of both client and server, you should use the local loopback server address – localhost, with the IP address 127.0.0.1

Note

It is possible to connect directly to a local Windows Superserver, without using the TCP/IP loopback. This is not a TCP/IP connection and it is not a thread-safe way to connect to a local server. For using single instances of the command-line tools (gsec, gbak etc.) it works just fine. By contrast, direct database connections - even multiple - under a Linux Classic server are completely safe.

Default user name and password

The SYSDBA user has all privileges on the server. The installation program will install the SYSDBA user with the password masterkey (actually, it's masterke: characters after the eighth are ignored).

If your server is exposed to the Internet at all, you should change this password immediately using the gsec command-line utility.

How to change the SYSDBA password

Firebird comes with a command-line tool called gsec that is used to manipulate user accounts.

Important

With some Firebird installations, you can only run gsec if you are logged into the operating system as Superuser (root on Linux) or as the user the Firebird server process runs under. On Windows server platforms, you typically need to be in the Power User group or higher to run gsec successfully.

If you have enough privileges but invoking gsec results in a message like “unavailable database - unable to open database”, the server probably isn't running. In that case, go back to Testing your installation and fix the problem.

Let's say you decide to change the SYSDBA password to icuryy4me.

Go to a command shell on your server and change to the directory where the command-line utilities are located. Refer to the Firebird installation components table to find this location.
Type the following:

gsec -user sysdba -password masterkey
Note
- On Linux, type ./gsec rather than gsec. Otherwise there's a chance that a “wrong” gsec is launched, or that it isn't found at all.
- Paths and file names are case-sensitive on all platforms except Windows; passwords are always case-sensitive.
You should now see the shell prompt for the gsec utility:

GSEC>
Type this command:

modify sysdba -pw icuryy4me
Press Enter. The new password icuryy4me is now encrypted and saved and masterkey is no longer valid.
Now quit the gsec shell:

quit

Note

Because Firebird ignores all characters in a password past the eighth character, icuryy4m will work, as will icuryy4monkeys.

An Admin tool

The Firebird kit does not come with a GUI admin tool. It does have a set of command-line tools, executable programs which are located in the bin subdirectory of your Firebird installation.

The range of excellent GUI tools available for use with a Windows client machine is too numerous to describe here. A few GUI tools written in Borland Kylix, for use on Linux client machines, are also in various stages of completion.

Inspect the Downloads > Contributed > Admin Tools page at http://www.ibphoenix.com for all of the options.

Note

You can use a Windows client to access a Linux server and vice-versa.