2.2. Build and install the firebird driver

First you have to unpack the libdbi-drivers archive in a suitable directory. Unpacking will create a new subdirectory libdbi-drivers-X.Y where "X.Y" denotes the version:

$ tar -xzf libdbi-drivers-X.Y.tar.gz

The libdbi-drivers project consists of several drivers that use a common build system. Therefore you must tell configure explicitly that you want to build the firebird driver (you can list as many drivers as you want to build):

$ cd libdbi-drivers

$ ./configure --with-firebird

Run ./configure --help to find out about additional options.

Then build the driver with the command:

$ make

Then install the driver with the command (you'll need root permissions to do this):

$ make install

To test the operation of the newly installed driver, use the command:

$ make check

This command creates and runs a test program that performs a few basic input and output tests. The program will ask for an administrator username and password. Default Firebird installations usually call the database superuser "sysdba" so this user is always a good start. Be sure to provide the name of a database which does not already exist (avoid 'test' which is used on many systems). To keep file permission problems out of this test (more on this below), you may prefer to keep the hostname empty and to specify a directory with write access.