odbcinst

odbcinst action object options

action is one of

-i

install a driver or data source

-u

uninstall a driver or data source

-q

query a list of drivers or data sources present on the system

--version

shows the version number of the program

object is one of

-d

an ODBC driver in /etc/odbcinst.ini

-s

an ODBC Data Source Name (DSN) in an odbc.ini file.

options are zero or more of

-f template file

Used with -i, this option specifies a template file containing the driver or DSN to be installed.

-r

Read the template from standard input.

-n Driver/Data Source Name

Used with -u to specify a driver or DSN to remove.

-v

Contrary to standard practice, this turns off verbose output; there is no output, even for errors.

-l

The specified Data Source object is a System DSN, in /etc/odbc.ini.

-h

The specified Data Source object is a User DSN, in the current user’s $HOME/.odbc.ini. This is the default with -s.

odbcinst updates the configuration files that control ODBC access to database servers on the current host. It also maintains in /etc/odbcinst.ini a count of the number of references to a particular driver, which can be used to determine whether it should be removed from the file (only when the reference count drops to 0).

Installing
Drivers and DSNs are installed using the -i option.

If the object to be installed is a driver (-d), the specified driver is added to /etc/odbcinst.ini or its reference count is incremented if it is already there.

If the object is a data source (-s), the data source is added either to /etc/odbc.ini (if -l is used) or to $HOME/.odbc.ini (the default, which can also be specified with -h).

Uninstalling
Uninstalling a driver is done with the command odbcinst -u -d -n driver name. Uninstalling a DSN is done with the command odbcinst -u -s -n data source name. Uninstalling causes the reference count on the object to be decremented. If nothing else has requested this driver or DSN (i.e., the reference count drops to zero), it is removed from the config file.

The options -l and -h are used with -s to specify which odbc.ini file to configure.

Queries
The command odbcinst -q -d returns a list of all drivers present in /etc/odbcinst.ini. The command odbcinst -q -s returns a list of all system and user DSNs available.

0

Success

non-zero

Failure

A typical driver template looks like this:

[MySQL]
Description = MySQL driver
Driver = /usr/lib/odbc/libmyodbc.so
Setup = /usr/lib/odbc/libodbcmyS.so

A DSN template looks like this:

[Sample DSN]
Description = Test MySQL connection
Driver = MySQL
Trace = Yes
TraceFile = /tmp/odbc.log
Database = junk
Server = localhost
Port = 3306
Socket =

The Description and Driver fields should be present in all DSN configurations. Other options are driver-specific; consult your ODBC driver’s documentation for a list of allowed options, or see ODBCConfig(1) for a graphical tool that can be used to interactively set up a DSN or driver the first time.

/etc/odbcinst.ini, /etc/odbc.ini, $HOME/.odbc.ini

ODBCConfig(1), gODBCConfig(1)

This manual page was written by Oliver Elphick <olly@lfix.co.uk> and Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> for the Debian package of unixODBC.