“In-place” Server Migration

Go Up to Migrating Servers and Databases

This section describes the recommended steps for replacing an InterBase 5 server with an InterBase 6 server.

1. Shut down each database before backup to ensure that no transactions are in progress.
2. Back up all databases on the version 5 server. Include isc4.ib if you want to preserve your configured user IDs.
   As a precaution, you should validate your databases before backing up and then restore each database to ensure that the backup file is valid.
3. Shut down the version 5 server. If your current server is a Superserver, you are not required to uninstall the server if you intend to install over it, although uninstalling is always good practice. You cannot have multiple versions of InterBase on the same machine. If your current server is Classic, you must uninstall before installing InterBase 6.
4. Install the version 6 server.
   Note:
   The install does not overwrite isc4.ib or isc4.gbk.
5. Start the new server.
   • On UNIX/Linux platforms, issue the following command to start the InterBase Superserver as user “InterBase”:
     echo "/usr/InterBase/bin/ibmgr -start -forever" | su InterBase
     Note that InterBase can run only as user “root” or user “InterBase” on UNIX.
6. To restore the list of valid users, follow these steps:
   1. Restore isc4.gbk to isc4_old.ib.
   2. Shut down the server.
   3. Copy isc4_old.ib over isc4.gdb.
   4. Copy isc4_old.gbk over isc4.gbk.
   5. Restart the server.
7. Delete each older database file. Restore each database from its backup file. This process creates databases in the current version. For databases that were 5.x or older when they were backed up, the dialect is 1. For later databases, the dialect is preserved.
8. Perform a full validation of each database.

After performing these steps, you have an InterBase 6 and later server and InterBase 6 and later, dialect 1 databases. See About InterBase 6 and Later, Dialect 1 Databases to understand more about these databases. See Migrating Databases to Dialect 3 for a description of how to migrate databases to dialect 3. See Migrating Clients for an introduction to client migration.

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• Migrating to a New Server