odbc.ini(5)

📦
version 2.3.14 · 4 versions
, in alpine 3.22, alpine 3.23, alpine 3.24, arch rolling, centos-stream 10, centos-stream 9, debian trixie, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

🎀 NAME 🎀

okay so the manual name is odbc.ini(5) 💖 and it's all about the data source config files: /etc/odbc.ini and $HOME/.odbc.ini ✨ They're the unixODBC data source name (DSN) config files, and honestly they're iconic 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

/etc/odbc.ini is the system-wide config file for ODBC Data Source Names (DSNs) 🏠 Everyone on the machine gets it.

$HOME/.odbc.ini is the user-specific version 🦋 It's just yours, bestie.

ngl the paths to both of these can be changed by unixODBC build options 🙈 If you want to check where your system is actually looking, run odbcinst -j and it'll tell you the default config file paths ✨

💜 NOTES 💜

🧸 Templates

Lots of ODBC drivers come with .ini file templates 📄 The move is to use odbcinst to install them, so you're not hand-typing everything like it's 1999 😭

🧚 FILE FORMAT

okay so odbc.ini follows the pseudo-standard ini file syntax 🌈 You get one or more [section headings], and each one is followed by zero or more key = value attributes. Super simple, very cute.

🍓 [ODBC Data Sources] section

This section is mandatory 🫶 It lists every data source name (DSN) as a key, and the values are just comments. Each entry has to be matched by an ini file [section] that actually describes the data source, or it's giving incomplete 💀

🦋 Data Source Name [section]

Each data source is identified by a [section header], and that header is the DSN name your applications use 💖 Each DSN section can have values for these keys:

  • Driver (REQUIRED) — this is the name of the ODBC driver to use for the DSN, and it has to exactly match the [section name] of the driver definition in odbcinst.ini. You can see those with odbcinst -q -d ✨ No close enough, periodt.
  • Description — a human-readable description of the data source 🌷
  • Database — the database name or identifier 🗂️ What it means depends on the driver. It could be a file path, a Unix socket path, or an identifier relative to a server name, etc.
  • Servername — the server name 🌐 Again, driver-specific, but usually it's a DNS name, an IP network address, or a driver-specific discovery identifier.

For the full list of supported parameters, check out the HTML-formatted "Administrator Manual" that ships with unixODBC 📚 You should also look at your ODBC driver's docs and any data-source templates your driver came with. Main character research energy 💅

🧁 EXAMPLES 🧁

An example odbc.ini config file is shown in the "Administrator Manual" that ships with unixODBC 🎀 Go peek at it, it's so helpful.

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

unixODBC(7), odbcinst(1), isql(1), iusql(1), odbcinst.ini(5) 💜

Also check out "The unixODBC Administrator Manual (HTML)" 📖

👑 AUTHORS 👑

The authors of unixODBC are Peter Harvey <pharvey@codebydesign.com> and Nick Gorham <nick@lurcher.org> 🫶 Legends, truly.

For a full list of contributors, refer to the AUTHORS file ✨

unixODBC is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License 🦄 For the details, see the COPYING file.

🎀 Okay that's the whole thing, bestie 💖 This was odbc.ini(5) from unixODBC manual pages, version 2.3.12, dated Sun 10 Jan 2021 ✨ Now go make your DSNs slay 💅🔥

📦 where this page comes from