[solved] Flamerobin: Message: Can't find or load FBCLIENT.DLL or GDS32.DLL

[Nicole]

So I happily created a new VM, installed Firebird 4 and Lazarus 2.2.4. and guess what:
Nothing works.
Well, we are long enough in business, not to be surprised by that 

What I tried: I made a backup of my Firebird 2.5 database (in the old VM) and wanted to restore it in the fresh and clean environment as version FB 4. Unfortunatley Flamerobin refuses to, and says, "Message: Can't find or load FBCLIENT.DLL or GDS32.DLL"

After a check of Google I found the hint, that I shall copy the FBCLIENT.DLL into the root of Flamerobin, - which did not help. The severe thing is, that a GDS32.DLL is not found on my new installation at all.

So I need one of the two ways or a third:
- How can I make Flamerobin work with the new installation of Firebird 4?
- What other ways are there to restore my DB into a FB 4 one?

[rvk]

The severe thing is, that a GDS32.DLL is not found on my new installation at all.

Not a severe thing because GDS32.DLL is normally for Interbase, not Firebird.

Only... older versions (and 4 too) can install a GDS32.DLL stub to make older clients (which can't handle fbclient.dll) work.
But for Lazarus/FPC and IBX you shouldn't have any need for GDS32.DLL.

So I need one of the two ways or a third:
- How can I make Flamerobin work with the new installation of Firebird 4?
- What other ways are there to restore my DB into a FB 4 one?

If you created a correct backup, it should be restorable with gbak of Flamerobin when you get it working.

Did you choose "Copy Firebird client library to <system> directory?" ??
What version of Flamerobin are you using? 32 bit / 64 bit?
Did you just use the default masterkey password during install or did you create another?

(Edit: I just did an install of Firebird 4.0.2 and Flamerobin 64 bit and it worked directly out of the box)

[Handoko]

Don't use FlameRobin. I don't know why FlameRobin crashed frequently on my system. I now use TurboBird, no problem so far.

[Nicole]

yes and yes and yes...
.... and I re-intsalled Firebird.

Now it works, what was the problem to my mind:
I chose all those checkboxes of your screehsot and "start service on startup" but may have not not said yes to the last question "start service now". So everything may have been there, - but not running.

Now my database is running in Firebird 4.
... and it looks alike my tables would be there.
I will not be glad about before I have not tried my code with them ;-)

@Handoko:
Thank you for the hint with TurnboBird.

What operating system do you use?
I have Win 7 64 bit and had FB 2.5. as local service and Flamerobin was stable here.
As I am not sure, if this will maintain with FB4, I saved your link for a rainy day.

[Handoko]

That crashes happened when I used Ubuntu Mate 22.04. That almost always happened, if I remember correctly, when running some insert and update queries, which are prohibited. Something like inserting row that causes duplicate primary key or not providing value for non-null-allowed field. If I did not press the rollback button after the exception happened, but closed the program, the FlameRobin would crash.

I used Firebird 3.0, installed from Ubuntu repository.

[Nicole]

ah, this sucks.
I hate interfaces, which do not allow to make mistakes. That is what they are made for.
And I am glad to read about, because I think over to change to Linux.

Have you the very recent version of FlameRobin?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/flamerobin/

And: I checked the Turbobird and found the latest version of 2014. Is this correct?
If yes, I may have problems with FB 4, as this - if I remember correctly - is from 2017.

[zoltanleo]

Have you the very recent version of FlameRobin?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/flamerobin/

Hi Nicole.

You can ask the developer of the program directly here:
https://github.com/mariuz/flamerobin

FlameRobin uses hard links to link to FB's client libraries. I tried several times to convince the maintainer to implement the ability to specify the location of the library by the user himself. But the author of the program either does not understand me, or this is not included in his plans.

Therefore, you can try adding and set the FIREBIRD environment variable or adding fbclient.dll to the system directories yourself.