gfix commands

Note: In the following discussion, I use the full parameter names in all examples. This is not necessary as each command can be abbreviated. When the command is shown with '[' and ']' in the name then these are the optional characters.

For example, the command -validate is shown as -v[alidate] and so can be specified as -v, -va, -val and so on up to the full -validate version.

For almost all of the options in the following sections, two of the above command line options will be required. These are -u[ser] and -pa[ssword]. These can be supplied for every command as parameters on the command line, or can be configured once in a pair of environment variables.

• -?

This switch displays the command-line options and switches. It replaces the old method in which you had to supply an invalid switch (such as -help) in order to see the list of valid ones.

Note: Firebird 2.5 onwards.

• -FE[TCH_PASSWORD] <password file name> | stdin | /dev/tty

This switch causes the password for the appropriate user to be read from a file as opposed to being specified on the command line. The file name supplied is not in quotes and must be readable by the user running gfix. If the file name is specified as stdin, then the user will be prompted for a password. On POSIX systems, the file name /dev/tty will also result in a prompt for the password.

Note: Firebird 2.5 onwards.

• -u[ser] username

Allows the username of the SYSDBA user, or the owner of the database to be specified. This need not be supplied if the ISC_USER environment variable has been defined and has the correct value.

• -pa[ssword] password

Supplies the password for the username specified above. This need not be supplied if the ISC_PASSWORD environment variable has been defined and has the correct value.

Note: Up until Firebird 2, any utility which was executed with a password on the command line could result in other users of the server seeing that password using a command like ps -efx | grep -i pass. From Firbird 2 onwards, this is no longer the case as the password on the command line can no longer be seen by the ps (or other) commands.

To define the username and password as environment variables on a Linux system:

linux> export ISC_USER=sysdba
linux> export ISC_PASSWORD=masterkey

Alternatively, on Windows:

C:\> set ISC_USER=sysdba
C:\> set ISC_PASSWORD=masterkey

Warning: This is very insecure as it allows anyone who can access your session the ability to perform DBA functions that you might not want to allow.

• -u[ser] default user name
• -pa[ssword] default password.

If you have not defined the above environment variables, some commands will not work unless you supply -u[ser] and -pa[ssword] on the command line. For example:

linux> gfix -validate my_employee
linux> Unable to perform operation. You must be either SYSDBA -
or owner of the database

Note: The line that starts with 'Unable to perform' above, has had to be split to fit on the page of the PDF file. In reality, it is a single line.

However, passing the username and password works:

linux> gfix -validate my_employee -user sysdba -password masterkey

You will notice, hopefully, that some commands do not give any printed output at all. gfix, in the main, only reports when problems are encountered. Always check the response code returned by gfix to be sure that it worked. However, see the caveats section below for details because it looks like the response code is always zero - at least up until Firebird 2.0.

Note: When logging into a database on a remote server, you will always be required to pass the -u[ser] and -pa[ssword] parameters.