Morning Mark,

> I just killed a database, stupid me :( I typed:
> gbak -Z mydb mydb.fdb
> where it should have been:
> gbak -Z mydb mydb.fbk

> According the the documentation of the -Z option:Displays the version
> number of the gbak utility and of the Firebird installation. You must
> supply a valid database name and backup filename - even though the
> backup will not actually be carried out - or the command will exit with
> an error code of 1 rather than zero.

> So this is not true! The -Z option does produce a backup, and in my case
> overwriting the database itself.

Yes indeed, I have checked this and found that if you run gbak -z you
get a version number for gbak itself and an error exit (exit code 1).
You do *not* get a backup.

If you supply a database name and a backup file, you get the gbak
version plus details about the version and ODS of the named database.

If you have supplied a username and password, or, have defined ISC_USER
and ISC_PASSWORD then you *will* get a backup.

I rather suspect this is a bug myself, but then again, the help for gbak
doesn't say that "-z prints gbak version and exits". Mind you, it also
doesn't say "-z prints gbak version, prints details of the database and
then makes a backup" either! ;-)

I have updated the documents to warn of this and apologise for the loss
of your database. I wrote the manual way back when 1.5 was just a
glimmer in the developers' eyes and I'm almost certain that I didn't end
up with a backup of the database when I was testing and documenting.

I've had a look at the source for 1.5, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.5 and they all
appear to do the same thing, so maybe my last paragraph isn't quite true!

> Bad day in history (for me).

And me, I hate to think that my docs have caused the loss of a database. :-(


Cheers,
Norman.

--
Norman Dunbar
Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd

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