FreeTDS Development Group

[Daniel Fazekas <fdsubs AT axelero.hu>]

On Apr 28, 2005, at 15:23, Hydak, Christopher wrote:

> I don't know where I came across putting the username and password  
> in the inifile...somewhere they suggested it but I agree that it's  
> bad form and hence probably not even used.

What Freddy was saying is that it's not just bad form; it's not even  
supported. It not supposed work. :)

> isql -v <DSN> <USER> "<PASSWD>"
> it gave me that previous error.  However, if I run this command:
> sudo isql -v <DSN> <USER> '<PASSWD>'
> It worked. Apparently both the single quotes

The need for single quotes is easy to explain.

From your friendly bash manual (info bash):
> Enclosing characters in double quotes (`"') preserves the literal  
> value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of ` 
> $', ``', and `\'.  The characters `$' and ``' retain their special  
> meaning within double quotes (*note Shell Expansions::).  The  
> backslash retains its special meaning only when followed by one of  
> the following characters: `$', ``', `"', `\', or `newline'.  Within  
> double quotes, backslashes that are followed by one of these  
> characters are removed.
> Backslashes preceding characters without a special meaning are left  
> unmodified.  A double quote may be quoted within double quotes by  
> preceding it with a backslash.

As opposed to single quotes:
> Enclosing characters in single quotes (`'') preserves the literal  
> value of each character within the quotes.  A single quote may not  
> occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.

That is, your password likely had a $, ` or \ sign in it.
So that makes this quite normal.

> and having root access are

The need for sudo, though, isn't normal, and you'd do well to figure  
out why it was necessary and fix it.

The likely explanation is that the user account you were using didn't  
have read access to some of the configuration files involved.

--
fds