--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@...> wrote:

>
> At 05:43 AM 9/07/2006, you wrote:
> >I'm evaluating a commercial Rails application for use against a
> >Firebird (ver 1.5.3) database. The application throws segmentation
> >faults when run against Firebird vs. Mysql; also, the Rails unit tests
> >throw segmentation faults (for me) against Firebird. However, my own
> >small test projects in Ruby (using FireRuby) and in Rails (using the
> >Firebird adapter that ships with Rails) run flawlessly. Are segfaults
> >with Firebird and Rails a problem that other people are facing?
>
> I've dabbled with Ruby so far and with Rails not at all, so my
> suggestion here doesn't have to do with Ruby/Rails specifically...
>
> I don't know how the Firebird-Ruby interface has been done,
> either. However, one source of segfaulting might be due to using the
> wrong Firebird client library in the mix. There are two.
>
> -- libfbembed.so is a local-only, direct-to-database client that can
> be used with Fb Classic for server-only applications and, e.g. can be
> used to connect isql to a FB Classic database locally. It will cause
> segfaults if you try to use it with Superserver
>
> -- libfbclient.so is the remote client that should be used *always*
> with Superserver and when connectly remotely (including locally via
> localhost) to Classic. But you will also get a segfault if you
> attempt to connect remotely to Classic using libfbembed.so.
>
> So I'd want to be examining the "mix" to see what the commercial
> application is connecting to, vis-a-vis which model of Firebird
> server you are running. It might not be as easy as checking library
> names...track through any symlinks...there are various possible
> complications, in combination or not, such as
>
> -- the application implementor (or FireRuby itself) might be a
> complete re-implementation of one or the other library, thus
> restricting you to use one specific server model
>
> -- one or other of them might be symlinking one or other (or both)
> client libraries locally and/or at the server as "libgds.so" to allow
> compatibility with either Firebird 1.0 or Interbase (both of which
> use the *same* library name for both versions!)
>
> You don't say which version of Firebird you're working with but, if
> it's one of the Fb 2.0 betas, it could be that the commercial app
> isn't "aware" of the changes in authentication there. In the same
> area of suspicion might be that the app was developed over Fb 1.0,
> which doesn't hold a write lock on the security database...
>
> >BTW, I love how Firebird delivers sophistication and performance in a
> >beautifully simple package!
>
> And it's great when third parties pick up Firebird and provide
> side-by-side support in MySQL's territory. If you do in fact
> discover that the trial app has some built-in, undocumented model or
> version usage limitations, be sure to write it up and forward it to
> the developer. It's not necessarily always the case that the
> implementor is fully clued up on the differences between Classic and
> SS. You might even get a freebie out of it!
>
> ./heLen
>

I apologize for not clarifying that I'm testing on Windows. (But --
hey -- I'll ask my son to try everything out on Linux. That's hope!)
Anyway, checking the client libraries is a good suggestion, and I've
determined that FireRuby on Windows wants "fblient.dll" for version
1.5.2 and that that in fact is the only client library on my path.
Still, no luck.

Thx