3.2.5. Installing on Windows

Make sure you run the installer program as Administrator (i.e. right-click on the executable and choose “Run as Administrator”) or you may run into permission problems later!

On Windows server platforms Firebird will run as a system service by default, but during installation you can also choose to let it run as an application. Don’t do this unless you have a compelling reason.

The installer will also ask if you want to enable authorization for legacy (i.e. pre-3.0) Firebird clients. If security is a concern (as it should be), don’t allow this or allow it only temporarily while you upgrade your existing clients to Firebird 3.0. The legacy connection method sends passwords over the wire unencrypted; it also limits the usable length of the password to 8 characters.

During installation you have the option of providing a password for Firebird’s superuser, SYSDBA. Firebird passwords may be up to 255 bytes long, but due to the nature of the hashing algorithm the “effective length” is around 20 bytes, so it’s not very useful to enter a password that’s much longer than that. Notice however that if you do enter such a password, you must supply it in its full length every time you connect — it won’t work if you truncate it to the first 20 characters!

Use the Guardian?

The Firebird Guardian is a utility that monitors the server process and tries to restart it if it terminates abnormally. During a Windows install, you can opt to use the Guardian when running in SuperClassic or Superserver mode. However, since modern Windows systems have the facility to watch and restart services, there is no reason to use the Guardian if Firebird runs as a service (which it should).

The Guardian may be phased out in future versions of Firebird.