No employee.fdb file when installing Firebird 3.0 onto Lunix Mint using the Synaptic Package Manager.

[Nick Vaughan]

After getting some very useful advice from my previous question I'm now trying a different approach to installing Firebird. Rather than trying to install 5.0 through tar.gz files I'm not trying to install 3.0 using the Synaptic Package Manager (SPM).

The packages being installed include
firebird3.0-server
firebird3.0-server-core
firebird3.0-utils
firebird3.0-common
firebird3.0-examples

The version installed is 3.0.8.33535.ds4-1ubuntu2.

The installed files are put into various places including
/etc/firebird/3.0
/lib/systemd/system/firebird3.0.service
/usr/bin/fb_lock_print
/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/firebird/3.0/databases.conf
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/firebird/3.0/fbtrace.conf
/usr/sbin/firebird
/usr/share/doc/firebird3.0-common-doc
/usr/share/firebird/3.0
/var/lib/firebird/3.0/data

Despite the comment in Section 4.1 of the Firebird 3.0 Quick-Start Guide (https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/pdf/en/firebirddocs/qsg3/firebird-3-quickstartguide.pdf) that the default location for firebird files is "/opt/firebird" there are no files under /opt.

For the firebird3.0-examples packages the destination folders are given as
/usr/share/doc/firebird3.0-common-doc/examples
/usr/share/doc/firebird3.0-examples

(There does seem to be a duplication of folders and files between these two folders).

I can see a /usr/share/doc/firebird3.0-common-doc/examples/employee.sql.gz file.

Neither from the lists of installed files in the SPM nor from searching in Thunar can I find an employees.fdb file.

Am I missing something?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Dimitry Sibiryakov]

Nick Vaughan wrote 15.03.2024 14:41:
> Am I missing something?

Packaging is not a part of Firebird project. It is up to Linux distro
maintainers and they used to do whatever they like so you should ask in Mint
support about it.
I see in Google the same question
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=351102 without answer so I can only
guess that Mint maintainer decided not to distribute a ready-to-use examples
database but a script for its creation only.
Perhaps, Mint distro as such is made for desktop (browser/mail) users only
and not supposed to run database servers at all.
In any case you can start from creation of your own empty database or try to
unzip and feed to isql employee.sql you found.

--
WBR, SD.

[Virgo Pärna]

On 15.03.2024 15:57, 'Dimitry Sibiryakov' via firebird-support wrote:
>   Perhaps, Mint distro as such is made for desktop (browser/mail) users
> only and not supposed to run database servers at all.

Even Debian does not provide binary employee.fdb (it is my
understanding, that Mint is based on Debian (via Ubuntu)). If user wants
one, user can use employee.sql script to create one.

--
Virgo Pärna
Gaiasoft OÜ
vi...@gaiasoft.ee

[Nick Vaughan]

Thank you to SD and Virgo on this. From what you say I need to go to the Linux Mint sites.

Regards

Nick