Tips'nTricks using FBScanner

Yes, sometimes I use FBScanner too. :-)
My system is complex, because I have huge number of Firebird, InterBase and Yaffil versions. While Yaffil does not interfere with Firebird and InterBase, I need to run periodically Firebird 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, 2.5 and InterBase 6.x, 7.0, 7.1, 7.5, 2007 and 2009. I do this by removing services records with "instsvc remove" after installation, because I don't need FB or IB as a service and run them ony as application like

fbserver -a
or
ibserver -a

To simplify this task I've created several cmd files that looks like
fb2.cmd:
call remove_all.cmd
d:\firebird2\bin\instreg install
d:\firebird2\bin\fbserver -a

and remove_all.cmd is:
d:\ib71\bin\instreg remove
d:\ib75\bin\instreg remove
d:\ib2007\bin\instreg remove gds_db
d:\ib2009\bin\instreg remove gds_db
d:\ya\bin\instreg remove
d:\intrbase\bin\instreg remove
d:\firebird\bin\instreg remove
d:\firebird2\bin\instreg remove
d:\firebird25\bin\instreg remove
...

So, if I need to run Firebird 1.5, I simply call fb15.cmd and less than in a second I have Firebird 1.5 running. If I need to run InterBase 2007, I just stop Firebird 1.5 application (shutdown) and run ib8.cmd.

Well, returning back to the FBScanner. By default it tries to find Firebird or InterBase service installed and intercept it's configuration to work on different than 3050 port. Unfortunately for the FBScanner I have only InterBase 4.1 service installed. Anyway, I leave FBScanner configuration as is, to intercept 3050 port and to redirect it to port 3052.
Then, I'm editing firebird.conf for example for the Firebird 2.1, uncommenting and changing parameter RemoteServicePort:

RemoteServicePort = 3052

So, when I start fb2.cmd my Firebird 2.1 runs and listens to port 3052, not to 3050.

So, if I will connect from any application to the Firebird, FBScanner will intercept traffic to the 3050 and will log everything is happening between Firebird server and client.

But, sometimes I don't want to intercept or watch some specific connections, or to watch connections only for specified databases. That's simple!
You need to know, that if fbclient.dll finds in the path one level above the file firebird.conf, it will use port number specified in it.

For example, if I will connect to some database with IBExpert, specifying client libriary as ...firebird2\bin\fbclient.dll, it will use port 3052 from the firebird.conf and traffic will not be intercepted by FBScanner.
Instead, if I want traffic to be intercepted by FBScanner, I need to write server name not as localhost, as usual, but as localhost/3050. This time traffic will go through FBScanner, and every statement and transactions will be monitored.

I hope this example will help you to configure Firebird and FBScanner if you want to check what your application is doing with the server.