firebird, Bad File Descriptor/Your user name and password are not defined

Question

I am trying to set up a test environment on my mac (os 10.12) and it requires Fishbowl/Firebird DB. No matter what I do i bounce back and forth between these two errors:

isql localhost:/Users/me/Fishbowl/database/data/EXAMPLE.FDB

which gives me:

Your user name and password are not defined. Ask your database administrator to set up a Firebird login.

And anything to do using gsec to create user or change password:

And:

Statement failed, SQLSTATE = HY000 operating system directive stat failed -Bad file descriptor

This is supremely frustrating. Fishbowl Client itself seems to hit this DB just fine. I have chmod 770 the /tmp/firebird directory and even tried to chown the example.fdb file itself.

Can anyone tell me how I might hit this DB from my java app or commandline? Both ways produce these errors.

Answer 1

1) Your connection line starts with "localhost:". That means you user TCP/IP connection to reach the database server. And the database server is running in a separate process. That means chmod and chown should not matter as long as there is firebird daemon server running and listening at TCP port ( default is 3050 AFAIR, you can read the value of your installation in the text file firebird.conf ).

Indeed, there is so-called "embedded server" or "embedded mode" where the server is loaded as DLL/SO library into the application. But then the connection string can not have network protocol prefix, so that should NOT be your case.

2) You can check documentation at http://firebirdsql.org/manual/isql-switches.html to specify your user and password in the isql command line. The Firebird has one built-in superuser, namely "SYSDBA". Regarding the password it might be a bit complicated.... It differs by Firebird version and platform

2.0) whatever SYSDBA password might be set by the server installation, if server comes in a bundle with some application the said application can override it later. Then you would either have to contact application developers or try to remove the bundled FB and install your own vanilla one, risking rendering the application no more functioning.

2.1) Windows installation of FB 2.x sets the "default" SYSDBA password as "masterkey" (only 8 first symbols actually matter)

2.2) Linux installation of FB 2.x generates a random SYSDBA password and saves it into a text file in Firebird folder.

2.3) MacOS ? Don't know. Perhaps it is closer to Linux than to Windows. So try to find such a text file and try "masterkey"

2.4) With FB 3 the authentication methods and configuration was greatly overhauled, so... So it is quite hard to tell something specific. At least for me.

3) I don't know what Fishbowl ever is, but Google suggests this: https://www.fishbowlinventory.com/wiki/Fishbowl_for_Mac If that is so, then check the bottomline examples at that page. They stress that you should sudo all those commands. That also makes sense because

3.1) Firebird daemon might have "trusted authentication" enabled, mapping FB users to Operating System users. On UNIX that would at least map SYSDBA to root. On Windows - to Administrator (however it is localized). This does not have to be enabled, but if it is then sudo UNIX command is exactly what makes applications run with OS superuser grants and might explain lack of user and password in the command line examples.

3.2) Firebird embedded server/mode work as part of an application process, and especially with CS (Classic Server) package on UNIX the command line utilities tend to fall into this mode. Then again it needs to be run as root to read highly sensitive data from Firebird Security Database, thus the need to sudo the command. Granted, I do not think your isql command might ever run in embedded mode - because you do specify "localhost:' prefix. But the example at the wiki link above - backup and restore - they use local connection strings, so they probably do run as embedded. So that might give you yet another hint - to try remove "localhost:" prefix from the connection string and to sudo isql rather than running it from regular user. It would hardly be a normal mode, but for test purposes why not.

Hope this helps.

PS. you might also try this Firebird IDE - it is simplistic, but again, for testing purposes... http://www.flamerobin.org/dokuwiki/wiki/manual