FreeTDS Development Group

[Peter Harvey <pharvey AT codebydesign.com>]

> You can use 'odbcinst' to merge that with /etc/odbcinst.ini, but I find 
> odbcinst really cumbersome and poorly documented. I would edit the file 
> directly.

1. You want to ensure that you have only one ODBC sub-system installed. 
So, assuming you want to use unixODBC, something like...

# find / -name "*iodbc*"

...should not return any files.

2. Typically; binary rpm installs go to /usr while source installs go to 
/usr/local. So its possible that once can have two versions of the ODBC 
susb-system installed. This is not good. For example; you should not 
have isql and odbcinst commands in /usr/bin AND /usr/local/bin. One of 
them should be removed. In such a case removing the binary install would 
probably be easiest because yu can use a single rpm command to do this.

3. The location of your odbc.ini/odbcinst.ini files can be configured a 
number of ways. For example; you have the default, the locations 
configured in the source build, the locations configured in a binary 
install, and what environment variables may say. This is why I recommend 
using ODBCConfig or even odbcinst when editing the odbc.ini/odbcinst.ini 
files. Assuming a proper install - these tools will use the proper 
locations/files. If you really want to edit the files by hand I would 
recommend that you use the odbcinst command-line tools to tell you where 
the location/files are expected.

NOTE: The odbcinst command-line tool was originally created to test the 
odbcinst library and was an excuse to create a tool for those interested 
in creating install scripts for drivers. ODBCConfig is really the way to 
go for most Users.

Peter