At 09:30 PM 31/03/2011, Norman Dunbar wrote:

>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 think it's a bug, too - an undesired side-effect of some decision at some point in history to make -backup the default switch if a restore option is not included.

After all these years with InterBase and Firebird, I only learned of this "undocumented feature" recently. I don't know who put it there. IMHO, it needs to go!

>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'd prefer to have the documentation be consistent with common sense. However, it looks like a necessary evil to document this bug and keep a record of all the versions and sub-releases that have it - currently, ALL of them, it seems.

./helen