Migrating to a New Server

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This section describes the recommended steps for installing InterBase 6 or newer as a new server and then migrating databases from a previous InterBase 5 or older installation. The process differs only slightly from an in-line install.

In the following steps, older refers to databases that are on a version 5 or older InterBase server. Newer and new refer to an InterBase version 6 or newer server.

1. Shut down the older databases before backup to ensure that no transactions are in progress.

2. Back up all databases that are on the older server. Include isc4.ib if you want to preserve your configured user IDs.

3. Install the new server.

4. 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.

5. Copy the database backup files to the new server and restore each database from its backup file. This process creates databases that have the current version, ODS, and dialect. (Note: In later versions of InterBase, it creates the appropriate current ODS, but always dialect 1.)

Save your backup files until your migration to dialect 3 is complete.

6. To restore the list of valid users, follow these steps:

a. Restore isc4.gbk to isc4_old.ib

b. Shut down the server.

c. Copy isc4_old.ib over isc4.gdb.

d. Copy isc4_old.gbk over isc4.gbk.

e. Restart the server.

7. Perform a full validation of each database on the new server.

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.