Problems upgrading from 1.5 to 2.5

I am trying to move an fb 1.5 database onto a server running 2.5 for testing.

I backup the database on the 1.5 server, copy the fbk file to the new server, then try to restore on the 2.5 server.

The database is dialect 1.

It starts the restore process but fails when it reaches a specific point with error: please retry, giving a database name.

Am I following the correct procedure to upgrade to 2.5?
What does this error mean and how do I solve it?

Can you try to migrate from 1.5 to 2.0 first? And if it's ok then from 2.0 to 2.1 and 2.1->2.5.

Is this by any chance a multi-file database?

I think I should be able to upgrade from 1.5 to 2.1 ok.
I'll try that, then try to upgrade to 2.5, then i'll post back here.

Just for info, no this is a single file database.

Can you tell us the name of the database file? Are there intervals in the name?
Can you tell us the options that you pass to gback?

migrating to firebird 2.1 works although i had to remove one of my indexes.

However migrating from 2.1 to 2.5 hits the same error at the same point.

I am using database workbench to perform the backup and restore. So to answer your question about exact gbak command i decided to use the command line from within the bin folder of the firebird_2_5 installation.

This yeilds a different error much earlier in the restore process. The command i am using is;

gbak.exe -v -c -user SYSDBA -password mypassword c:\firebird\jewel_2_1.bak c:\firebird\jewel.fdb

The error i get is;

ERROR: Malformed string
Invalid metadata detected. Use -FIX_FSS_METADATA option.

I have researched this and I understand I need to add the option along with the character set of the original database.

What character set should i use, because this is something i have never set before?

If you didn't care about until now, then it's probably NONE. To be sure, execute the following query on your source/original database.

Now when you mentioned the character sets I've remembered something.
Migrating from Firebird <2.1 to 2.1 you need to run a script to fix some problems with the character sets.

In Firebird subdirectory \misc\upgrade\metadata there are few documents with explanation how to do it and SQL scripts for that.

After that do backup restore to 2.5 with those -FIX_FFS options - there are 2 one for the metadata and one for the data in the database. Maybe it's good to use both.

running the restore with the -FIX_FSS_METADATA option solved the problem.

My understanding (now) is that this new option in gbak iliminates the need to run migration scripts.


Thanks for you help with this guys, i'm now up and running on 2.5.

Correct.