'Firebird 2.5 reports "is not a valid database" although it is

I've got two computers both running Firebird (let's called them A and B) and two database files (let's call them a.fdb and b.fdb), both copied to both computers. On B I get the message

b.fdb is not a valid database The other files work, on A both files work.

This would be easy to explain, if B was an older version, but it's a newer one (it was FB 2.1, and because of this problem I installed FB 2.5). The files a.fdb and b.fdb have ODS 11.1 and 10.1, respectively. It looks like new versions of FB wouldn't support ODS 10.1 anymore, which I can't believe. But I see no other explanation, can you?

firebirdfirebird2.5


Solution 1:[1]

Try to make backup and restore of database.

Solution 2:[2]

I had the same problem with an old database.

In my case even the gbak command presented the "is not a valid database". (I also tried with the FIX_FSS_METADATA option)

I found that if the database was created in an 32bits environment it can't be opened in a 64bits one.

So, what I had to do was:

  • Create a VM with a 32bits environment (in my case I created a VM with Windows XP)
  • Copy the database to this VM and make a backup using GBAK
  • Copy the backup file to my machine (64bits)
  • Run a restore using GBAK

After all this I could open the database again.

Hope it helps!

Solution 3:[3]

In my case I can't open a database whose was created in 32 bits in a 64 bits, so try to install firebird in 32 bits

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Hugues Van Landeghem
Solution 2
Solution 3 André Ibarra

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