Firebird minimum server installation - firebird

I have installed Firebird server from the zip kit using instsvc.exe. The work's done well with the inno setup Exec function.
instsvc install -auto -name 'FireBird2_5'
My question is what are the minimum files necessary to install Firebird server.
The installer is too slow due to unnecessary files, I found this link and I'm looking for something similar.

The total size of Firebird 2.5.8 is 230 files and +/- 30MB unzipped, I doubt this would really be a problem, but if you really want to minimize things, you can remove the following.
Using Firebird-2.5.8.27089-0_x64.zip as the basis, you can get rid of the following files or folders because they are just examples and documentation, or files for specific purposes (if you know you need them, don't delete them):
doc
examples
help
include
lib
misc
system32
udf (most have been replaced by built-in functions anyway)
Readme.txt
In theory you can remove the intl folder, but that will severely limit character set support in Firebird which can cause a lot of problems, so I'd advise against that.
If I'm not mistaken it should also be possible to remove plugin\fbtrace.dll and fbtrace.conf, but you may want to double check that.
From the bin folder, you can get rid of the following files:
fbguard.exe (make sure you don't enable use of Firebird Guardian using instsvc)
gdef.exe (tool for deprecated GDL DDL language)
gpre.exe (preprocessor for compiling embedded SQL, unlikely you need this)
gsplit.exe (tool for splitting backup files)
install_classic.bat
install_super.bat
install_superclassic.bat
qli.exe (tool for a deprecated query language)
uninstall.bat
If you don't need the administrative tools (but this might not be a good idea because management, and fixing or diagnosing database problems gets harder), you can also remove from bin:
fb_lock_print.exe
fbsvmgr.exe
fbtracemgr.exe
gbak.exe
gfix.exe
gsec.exe
gstat.exe
isql.exe
nbackup.exe
In theory you could also get rid of fb_inet_server.exe or fbserver.exe, depending on whether you use Classic, SuperServer or SuperClassic. Classic and SuperClassic use fb_inet_server.exe and SuperServer fbserver.exe; you can delete the other.
The other files are either technically necessary or legally necessary (the license notices).

Related

How to reference a specific DLL for functionality in said DLL

Good day,
I have an application that I developed that transfers files between two machines ("site" and "server"). This application was set to target dotNet 3.5. Furthermore, I am using Renci.SshNet to handle the connections between the machines and the transferring of said files.
The issue that I am facing currently though is that about 70% of the "site" machines do not have a standard dotNet and is also quite old; thus these machines do not support all the required functionality as the external dll makes calls to System.Threading.WaitHandle.WaitOne() and System.Threading.WaitHandle.WaitAny(WaitHandle[], Int32) and other overloads of these methods.
The workaround that I have for this though is to install netfx20SP2 or netfx30SP1, yet I am not in the position to perform this update on all machines as they are scattered across the country and have data limitations (bandwidth and cap).
What I want to do possibly is to embed the System.Threading dll that I have downloaded and then the application should use those classes instead, or alternatively just point the application to use the said dll.
Is this at all possible, or do you have to load the dll into the GAC? And also, will it be possible to "run" this higher version of System.Threading in the application while the system itself is on a lower framework version. Something is telling me that the best bet will be to actually run the service pack installation to avoid unnecessary coding but I'm not sure exactly how to approach this.
Thank you in advance for any assistance / suggestions,
JD
To allow the execution of an application that, let's say, targets .Net 4; while the machine itself only has let's say, .Net 3.5, installed, one can redirect Windows to check the local (executing) directory for dlls that should contain the required symbols loaded into memory instead of the default symbols that get loaded upon execution (the default would be the NetFx installed on the machine - which I believe the highest version of the framework that can be found upon loading when the execution starts or would be the highest available version that is lower or equal to the targeted framework).
This file's contents (myApp.exe.local) are ignored. It is just there to tell Windows to
look in that folder for the applicable symbols and if not found, the system will roll back to attempt to load these symbols from the NetFx directory.
Read more at Microsoft Dev Center - Docs (link is attached to the following paragraph which is a Copy-Paste of a section of this document).
To use DLL redirection, create a redirection file for your application. The redirection file must be named as follows: App_name.local. For example, if the application name is Editor.exe, the redirection file should be named Editor.exe.local. You must install the .local file in the application directory. You must also install the DLLs in the application directory.

How to create VCS-like conflict-merging file?

I'm trying to generate "unresolved-conflict"-like files with no luck.
I checked diff manpage and googled about diff, merging etc... but I only found information about how to handle these files, but not about how to actually generate them.
To be clear, what I am trying to do is, having two similar files, generate single automatically merged one similar to that most VCS systems like Git or Subversion generate over files in "conflict" status.
The main goal is be able to rapidly edit it to manually resolve all differences just as I do in Git or Subversion but without having them in any VCS system.
I "almost" successfully generated full diffs with diff -C 1000000command (because I won't have too large files that context limit is pretty acceptable).
...but resulting file comes with ALL rows modified. That is: prepended by "-" or "+" (depending of if it comes from first or second file) or " " (space) for common rows.
What I would obtain is an "almost unchanged" file with sections like following example emphasizing differences:
<<<<<<<< File1
Section from File1
Foo
========
Section from File2
Bar
>>>>>>>> File2
EDIT:
Answering #s.m. comment, I explain here what is my exact goal (because it is too long to explain in a comment):
I'm working on a server to allocate multiple PostgreSQL clusters acting as hot-stanby of distinct masters.
I already successfully implemented binary full/incremental backups (bacula) over production servers and also have a helper script to configure hot-standby servers.
But nowadays we have to setup (and mantain -and ideally periodically check-) all of them one by one.
To make it simpler, we are planning to create single (or possibly multiple) "Super"-hot-standby server(s) containing multiple clusters replicating different master servers.
My goal is to have a single script to create new standby cluster easily without too complicated tunning and not having to bother about backup setup (because all clusters will be backed up at once).
I almost successfully implemented that script: It creates a new cluster in a free port, adjust needed configuration parameters and put it in sync with master.
These adjustmens are made over "default" configuration files but some masters may have special configuration parameters (specially memory adjustments) that must be replicated in standby because, otherwise, it could be unable to replicate some operations of the master). And there is too the pg_haba.conf which defines which users/servers are allowed to connect to, which we also want to replicate on standby (for an eventual failover).
So, to make it easier (and less error prone) to merge both configuration files, I implemented a bash function to retrieve configuration files from masters and, now, my goal is to merge it with forementioned "default-tuned" one.
This way, adding new standby would be as easy as executing our script providing master's network name and reviewing automatically merged files to manually solve the few differences encountered in merge.
EDIT 2:
To be clear, what I were trying to do in preference order is:
Approach it by just using GNU Diff (like #s.m. pointed in his comment) even by using complex arguments or piping to external tools usually available on most unix* systems so I can wrap it in a bash function and use it in my script without no dependencies.
Use some existing tool (but not reinvent the wheel).
Implement my own tool and use it.
Without better solution, I finally tried to implement my own tool (which I called 'humandiff') to approach it.
I published it in Github and uploaded as npm package so I can now install it from npm in producion servers.
Even thought it needs a little setup to be installed. That is:
Install NodeJS and NPM (sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy npm in debian-like systems).
Install humandiff itself (sudo npm install -g humandiff).
Usage and output examples can be found in README file so I do'nt extend myself anymore.
I post this answer just in case someone happens to have the same problem but, anyway, better solutions would be welcomed too.
Edit: I missed to say, even it's pretty obvious, that in fact I didn't implement any diff algorithm at all. I just noticed that having position and offset metatata provided by GNU diff and one of the original files is possible to construct the other or that merged file a were searching for so I simply implemented a wrapper to de so. But, instead of calling GNU Diff binary, I found an also named "diff" module in the NPM repository that served to me for the same task.

Sitecore Powershell Console - Copy Media Items from one DB to another

We are in process of upgrading Sitecore 6.6 to 7.2. Part of upgrade is to migrate all the media items from 6.6 to 7.2.
I tried creating a package but the package size is too large and times out on package installation.
I found link below using Powershell Console where it shows copy-item command:
http://blog.najmanowicz.com/2011/11/18/sample-scripts-for-sitecore-powershell-console
I attached the 6.6 to 7.2 version where I can access the 6.6 DB. However copy-item doesn't seem to support different databases.
Could someone please help how I can use SiteCore Powershell or similar to migrate media items from 6.6 to 7.2?
I had a similar issue with a (very large) media library with a similar migration. Packages seems to bomb out around the 2GB mark, instead serialize the items:
Delete everything from /Data/Serialization
Open the media library. Makes sure you have the Developer tab
showing (right click somewhere on the toolbar and enable it
otherwise)
Select your root media item then Serialize Tree
Wait...
Copy the serialized files from /Data/Serialization to your new
server
From the toolbar select Update or Revert Tree depending on your requirements
Profit.
You can find more info in the Sitecore Serialization Guide and this post by Brian Pedersen
You should be able to do this in Powershell too (from my understanding). You need to:
Add the database to your connectionString.config
Add that database to your web.config to <sitecore><databases><database>. You can copy the existing master node and rename the id attribute to match your conneciton name
Your legacy database should now be connected to Sitecore interface, you can check it is present in the database selector list from the right of the desktop
The powershell command now needs a "from" and "to" location. Assume your database is called "legacy_master", the following should work:
copy-item "master:\media library\*" "legacy_master:\media library\"
I've found Hedgehog TDS (and sometimes Razl) quite useful for doing this.
Create a new TDS project (don't version control it), and download all the items you need to your local machine. You can for example connect the "Debug" build to your source 6.6 instance, and a "Release" build to your target 7.2 instance. Then you can just synchronize the items to your target machine. It's sometimes good to synchronize one or a few branches at a time if you have long latency connections.
The good thing about this is that you're in total control of your content and can see what fields are updated etc. During an update process, it's sometimes useful to compare other parts of the db as well, just to ensure you don't miss any changes you've made to the platform.
Since I mentioned Razl as well: I've found Razl quite good if you have a whole branch that you know should be transferred from one db to another (such as the case you describe). TDS is a bit slower, but more universal - and you may have a TDS license already so it may not be worth an additional Razl license.
I've just added item transfer from one DB to another so you can Copy-item between databases starting with Sitecore PowerShell Extensions 3.0. Thanks for the great idea!
Just to add another option you can perform tasks like this using Revolver.
WARNING: Try this in a test environment first
if we assume that:
the context item is the media library item
the current database is master
the target database is called master72
then something like this should work:
cp -r -n master72/sitecore/

How does one 'Extract Com Information' from an OCX without InstallShield?

In one of the projects our team is working on, we are trying to make an automated deployment system for an existing desktop application. In order to do that we need to understand how InstallShield installs the application to begin with.
We have access to the InstallShield manifest, but there is an OCX file that we cannot figure out how to install manually (without InstallShield). This particular OCX file is set to 'Extract COM Information'.
Here's a screenshot:
The other OCXs in this application are self-registering, so they can be registered with Regsvr32.exe. But the OCX we are having problems with cannot be registered in that fashion.
How would one manually install an OCX file that is set to 'Extract COM Information' in an InstallShield manifest?
RegSvr32.exe calls the LoadLibrary API to load your DLL and then invokes the DllRegisterServer entry point inside your DLL. The code inside that function does the actual COM registration. If RegSvr32 is failing, that typically means a dependency of your DLL is missing or invalid.
InstallShield does all of this along with some really low level bit hacking to virtualize all of this and then harvest it. An old article on the subject is:
Spying on Registry Entries
InstallShield doesn't actually use this technique per say ( they have several techniques, most of which is not documented and various filters and transform engines to clean up the data ). If you are just looking for a way to do it without InstallShield, then look at Windows Installer XML's "Heat" command line tool. This can "harvest" COM metadata into WxS XML elements.
Also WiX is open source so if you are really curious you could go looking at their code.
As Christopher mentioned, InstallShield extracts COM information from your .ocx by seeing what it registers when invoked similarly to regsvr32.exe will invoke it. Its various forms of redirection (for capturing purposes) have the added benefit of working around several potential permissions problems while the file is registering in your build environment. However if I'm not missing the point of your question, it's "why doesn't regsvr32.exe your.ocx work on the target machine?"
This is a bit of a stab in the dark, as you haven't included enough information. While missing dependencies can cause this, I'm going to guess you only see this failure on Windows Vista/Server 2008 or higher. If this is the case, there's a good chance your application is trying to write to registry keys that are protected by Windows Resource Protection (WRP), or is being tripped up by a per-user typelib registration problem.
When a poorly behaved self-registration routine encounters WRP, it attempts to write to a registry key it lacks permission to modify, then fails the entire registration. I'm uncertain what happens to the keys it wrote before that point, but all ones after it definitely never make it to the machine. You should be able to confirm whether this is the case with a tool like Process Monitor.
What do you do if this is the case? Well, you can stick with an extraction approach like that of InstallShield (which you say you want to leave). You can fix the file to not attempt to write to protected keys (which you say you cannot modify). Or you might be able to use the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to shim things, but I don't see how you can generally do that downstream. Generally speaking, I would recommend fixing the file, or continuing to use a working approach.

Storing third-party framework/middleware into source control that needs to alter your compiler/IDE

I know there are posts that ask how one stores third-party libraries into source control (such as this and this). While those are great answers, I still can't find the answer to this:
How do you store third-party middleware/frameworks binaries that need to alter your compiler / IDE for the library to work properly? Note: for my needs, I don't need to store the middleware source, I only store header files / lib / JAR ..so that it's ready to be linked.
Typically, you simply link libraries to your app, and you are good. But what about middleware / frameworks that need more?
Specific examples:
Qt moc pre-processor.
ZeroC Ice Slice (ice) compiler (similar to CORBA IDL preprocessor).
Basically these frameworks/middleware need to generate their own code before your application can link to it.
From the point of view of the developer, ideally he wants to just checkout, and everything should be ready to go. But then my IDE/compiler will not be setup properly yet, so the compilation will fail..
What do you think?
Backup everything including the setup of the IDE, operating system, etc. This is what i do
1) Store all 3rd party libraries in source control. I have a branch for all the libraries.
2) Backup the entire tool chain which was used to build. This includes every tool. Each tool is installed into the same directory on each developers computer, so this makes it simple to setup a developers machine remotely.
3) This is the most hardcore, but prepare 1 perfect developer IDE setup which is clean, then make a VMWare / VirtualPC image out of it. This will be useful when you cant seem to get the installers to work in future.
I learned this lesson the painful way because I often have to wade through visual studio 6 code which don't build properly.
I think that a better solution is to make sure that the build is self-contained and downloads all necessary software for itself unless you tell it otherwise. This is the way maven works, and it is really handy. The downside is that it sometimes needs to download a application server or similar, which is highly unpractical, but at least the build succeeds and it becomes the new developers responsibility to improve the build if needed.
This does of course not work great if your software needs attended installs, but I would try to avoid any such dependencies in any case. You can add alternative routes (e.g the ant script compiles the code if eclipse hasn't done it yet). If this is not feasible, an alternative option is to fail with a clear indication of what went wrong (e.g 'CORBA_COMPILER_HOME' not set, please set and try again').
All that said, the most complete solution is of course to ship everything with your app (i.e OS, IDE, the works), but I doubt that that is applicable in the general case, how would you feel about that type of requirements to build a software product? It also limits people who want to adapt your software to new platforms.
What about adding 1 step.
A nant script which is started with a bat file. The developer would only have to execute one .bat file, the bat file could start nant, and the Nant script could be made to do anything you need.
This is actually a pretty subtle question. You're talking about how to manage features of the environment which are necessary in order to allow your build to proceed. In this case it's the top level of your code toolchain, but the problem can be generalised to include the entire toolchain, and even key aspects of the operating system.
In my place of work, we have various requirements of the underlying operating system before our code will successfully run. This includes machine-specific configurations as well as ensuring correct versions of system libraries and language runtimes are present. We've dealt with this by maintaining a standard generic build machine image which contains the toolchain requirements we need. We can push this out to a virgin machine and get a basic environment that contains the complete toolchain and any auxiliary programs.
We then use fsvs to version control any additional configuration, which can be layered on to specific groups of machines as needed.
Finally, we use custom scripts hooked in to our CI server (we use Hudson) to perform any pre-processing steps required for specific projects.
The main advantages for us of this approach is:
We can build and deploy developer and production machines very easily (and have IT handle this side of the problem).
We can easily replace failed machines.
We have a known environment for testing (we install everything to a simulated 'production server' before going live).
We (the software team) version control critical configuration details and any explicit pre-processing steps.
I would outsource the task of building the midleware to a specialized build server and only include the binary output as regular 3rd party dependencies under source control.
If this strategy can be successfully applied depends on whether all developers need to be able to change midleware code and recompile it frequently. But this issue could also be solved via a Continous Integration Server like Teamcity that allows to create private builds.
Your build process would look like the following:
Middleware repo containing middleware code
Build server, building middleware
Push middleware build output to project repository as 3rd party references
Update: This doesn't really answer how to modify the IDE. It's just a sort-of Maven replacement thingy for C++/Python/Java. You shouldn't need to modify the IDE to build stuff, if so, you need a different IDE or a system that generates/modifies IDE files for you. (See CMake for a cross-platform c/c++ project file generator.)
I've written a system (first in Ant/Beanshell at two different places, then rewrote it in Python at my current job) where third-partys are compiled separately (by someone), stored and shared via HTTP.
Somewhat hurried description follows:
Upon start, the build system looks through all modules in repo, executes each module's setup target, which downloads the specific version of a third-party lib or app that the current code revision uses. These are then unzipped, PATH/INCLUDE etc are added to (or, for small libs, copy them to a single directory for the current repo) and then launches Visual Studio with /useenv.
Each module's file check for stuff that it needs, and if it needs installing and licensing, such as Visual Studio, Matlab or Maya, that must be on the local computer. If that's not there, the cmd-file will fail with a nice error message. This way, you can also check that the correct version is in there
So there are a number of directories on the local disk involved. %work% needs to be set using an global environment variable, preferrable on a different disk than system or source-checkout, at least if doing heavy C++.
%work% <- local store for all temp files, unzip, and for each working copy's temp files
%work%/_cache <- downloaded zips (2 gb)
%work%/_local <- local zips (for development or retrieved in other manners while travvelling)
%work%/_unzip <- unzips of files in _cache (10 gb)
%work%&_content <- textures/3d models and other big files (syncronized manually, this is 5 gb today, not suitable for VC either)
%work%/D_trunk/ <- store for working copy checked out to d:/trunk
%work%/E_branches/v2 <- store for working copy checked out to e:/branches/v2
So, if trunk uses Boost 1.37 and branches/v2 uses 1.39, both boost-1.39 and boost-1.37 reside in /_cache/ (as zips) and /_unzip/ (as raw files).
When starting visual studio using bat files from d:/trunk/BuildSystem/Visual Studio.cmd, INCLUDE points to /_unzip/boost-1.37, while if runnig e:/branches/v2/BuildSystem/Visual Studio.cmd, INCLUDE points to /_unzip/boost-1.39.
In the repo, only a small set of bootstrap binaries need to be stored (i.e. wget and 7z).
We currently download about 2 gb of packed data, which is unzipped to 10 gb (pdb files are huge!), so keeping this out of source control is essential. Having this system allows us to keep the repo size small enough to use DVCS such as Mercurial (or Git) instead of SVN, which is very nice. (I'm thinking of using Mercurials bigfiles extension or file sharing instead of a separately http-served directory.)
It work flawlessly. Developers need only to check out, set an enviroment variable for their local cache, then run Visual Studio via a specific batch-file in the repo. No unzipping or compiling or stuff. A new developer can set up his computer in no time. (Installing Visual Studio takes the order of a magnitude more time.)
First time on a new computer takes some time, but then it's fast, only a few seconds. Downloads/unzips are shared on the local computer, do checking out additional branches/versions does not occupy more space. Working offline is also possible, you just need to get the zip files manually if new ones have been uploaded. (This mechanism is essential to test new versions/compilations of third-party libraries.)
The basics are in a repo on bitbucket but it needs more work before it's ready for the public. Apart from doc and polish, I plan to:
extend it to use cmake instead of raw
vcproj-files, to make it more
cross-platform.
script the entire
process from checkout/download of
third-party packages to building and
zipping them (including storing the
download in a local repo) ... currently that's on my dev computer. Not good. Will fix. :)
As for moc, we use Qt's Visual Studio add-in, which stores this in the .vcproj files. Works well. I do think that CMake is one of the best answers for this though