The

file describes Sybase and Microsoft database servers to the FreeTDS library. It comprises sections headed by a servername, followed by a list of connection properties denoted as name-value pairs. Defaults are defined via a

section. This file supersedes the

file that Sybase defines for the same purpose, although the latter is still supported.

A section begins with a servername — the name of the server — in square brackets. The servername is chosen at the client's descretion. (One exception: with Sybase ASA the servername must match the database name to be used.)

Sections contain properties, one per line, in the form

where

is the connection property to be described. Servernames and properties are not case sensitive. Values are case-preserving i.e., copied literally. Comments begin with either a semicolon

or pound sign

and continue to end of line. Blank lines are ignored. Whitespace surrounding the

encoding of client data; overrides locale(1) settings

iconv character set names

ISO-8859-1

seconds to wait for response from connect request

0 to MAX_INT

none

logging granularity

32-bit integer

0x4fff

specifies location of a logfile and turns on logging

valid file name

none

log data appended to file instead of re-writing for each connection

yes/no

no

forces big endian machines to act as little endian to communicate with Microsoft Servers

yes/no

no

disables encryption

use if available (default when tds version greater than 7.0)

allow encrypted connections only

Name of the host the server is running on.

host name or IP address

SYBASE

maximum size of a protocol block

multiple of 512

512

name of Microsoft SQL Server instance to connect to (supersedes

instance name

none

port number that the server is listening to

any valid port

TDS 5.0, 5000; TDS 7.0 and up, 1433

TDS protocol version to use

4.2, 5.0, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2

value (5.0 if unspecified)

default value of TEXTSIZE, in bytes

0 to 4,294,967,295

4,294,967,295

seconds to wait for response to a query

0 to MAX_INT

none (wait forever)

Do not define both

and

. One implies the other.

Boolean property values may be denoted as on/off, true/false, or 1/0.

The log's granularity can be controlled with the

property.

The file is normally named

or

That name can be overridden with the FREETDSCONF environment variable.

FreeTDS will search conf files for a servername in the following order:

a filename set programmatically via dbsetifile() that is in .conf format

a filename in the environment variable FREETDSCONF that is in .conf format

if extant

The search stops with the first file containing the servername.

If no conf file is found, FreeTDS searches for an

file in the following order:

a filename set programmatically via dbsetifile() that is in

format

(where

If the requested servername is not found in any configuration file, the fallback mechanism is:

attempt to convert the name to an IP address with inet_addr(3), else

attempt to convert the name to an IP address with gethostbyname(3), else

attempt to look up the literal name

overrides name and location of the system-wide conf file

overrides the name and location of the FreeTDS log file

specifies a name and location of a file that logs the search of configuration files

overrides the host property

overrides the port property

synonym for DSQUERY, the default servername

overrides the version specified in the freetds.conf

The environment variables

override values set by a .conf or

file.

.conf files first appeared with version 0.53 of FreeTDS.