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Installing ODBC on Linux

At work, we use Microsoft SQL Server and IBM AS400 databases. Here’s how I set our Linux boxes to allow them to connect to the databases through ODBC. There are seperate instructions for the Debian and Ubuntu (9.10 Karmic Koala) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL4 and RHEL5) distributions.

ODBC connections require several layers of software to work. The bottom layer consists of the individual ODBC drivers for each database system. Our top layer is the DBI/DBD interface for Perl. In between these layers is the ODBC driver manager, which keeps track of the DSN’s and their corresponding ODBC drivers.

Packages and Software to Install

Ubuntu Version (tested on 9.10 Karmic Koala)
Debian Version (“unstable” distribution)

We use unixODBC as our ODBC driver manager. First, install unixODBC:
NOTE: Perl’s DBD::ODBC module requires the developer’s version of unixODBC, so install that one. 

  # apt-get install unixodbc-dev

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Last Updated: Tue, 09 Mar 2010

Debian Upgrade Woes

We run two Debian Linux servers at work: a back-up web server and a sandbox for random Linux development. Recently, I decided to do an apt-get upgrade on the servers to update their software packages to the latest versions.

I figured it would be simple. We were already running the unstable branch. And it hadn’t been that long since I last attempted an upgrade. So, as root, I issued the following commands: 

# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade

Uh-oh! I kept getting the following error: 

Setting up libc6 (2.3.5-3) ...
mv: error while loading shared libraries: libacl.so.1: cannot enable
executable stack as shared object requires: Error 14

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Last Updated: Thu, 17 Nov 2005