firebird8

Usage

Overview

firebird is the main process of the Firebird RDBMS server. It has three modes of operation:

single-process

This is the same as the superserver flavour of version 2.5 and before. It consists of a single listener process that handles all connections. It is single-threaded and therefore is capable of using only one CPU. All connections use shared cache to database pages. A crash in the code handling a connection brings down the whole server.

standalone classic

This is the same as the superclassic flavour of the 2.5 version. A single listener process spawns a new thread for each connection. It is capable of utilizing multiple CPUs. The database cache is not shared between connections. The inter-process communication is pretty fast because all threads reside in the same process. A crash in the code handling a connection brings down the whole server.

Internet "super-server" handler

This is the same as the classic flavour of version 2.5 and before. Each connection is handled by a separate fireird process, spawned by the Internet super-server (e.g. inetd or xinetd). It is capable of utilizing multiple CPUs. The database cache is not shared and the inter-process communication is slower than the other operational modes. In this mode, a crash caused by one connection doesn't bring down the whole server, but only the crashed instance.

Options

-d

Turn debugging on

-s

Use standalone classic mode of operation.

-i

Use single process mode of operation.

-p port

specify listening port number or protocol name

-h

-?

Print short usage information

-e dir

Specify the path to the Firebird root directory.

-el dir

Specify the path to the lock directory.

-em dir

Specify the path to the directory containing the messages file.

-z

Print version information and exit

Author & copyright

Copyright (C) 2009, 2010, Damyan Ivanov.

This manpage was written by Damyan Ivanov for the Debian project but may be used by others. Permission is granted to use this document, with or without modifications, provided that this notice is retained. If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return.