The default authentication method on Windows platforms is no longer mixed. It has been changed to native. For more information, see the notes on the configuration parameter Authentication.

A fix in Firebird 2.5 that alleviates the “hogging” behaviour of the nBackup utility has been backported to this patch release. For more information, see the Improvement in V.2.1.3 note in the nBackup section of the Utilities chapter.

By popular request, Dmitry Yemanov adds some helpful performance guidelines pertaining to the “internals” of the database monitoring system (a.k.a. “MON$”). The purpose is to assist those using this facility on heavily loaded systems to employ it in ways that provide the information you want while minimising its impact on the end-user experience.

Known Issue

At some point in V.2.1 development, a breakage occurred in the behaviour of TempDirectories, the configuration parameter by which you can configure a list of spaces where the engine can write the intermediate sets for sorting when it finds it does not have enough RAM available for these sets. Since V.2.1 (and still), although the engine will use the first space listed in TempDirectories, it fails to “hand on” sets to the any of the other configured spaces if the first space is exhausted. (Tracker reference CORE-2422).

Because of the impact on related code, this regression cannot be fixed for the V.2.1.3 patch release. The workaround for now is to ensure that you configure enough space in the single location that the engine can address.

A regression issue surfaced with the implementation of the new gfix shutdown modes when shutdown is called with the -attach or -tran options. If connections are still alive when the specified timeout expires, the engine returns a message indicating that the shutdown was unsuccessful. However, instead of leaving the database in the online state, as it should, it puts the database into some uncertain “off-line” state and further connections are refused.

It affects all versions of Firebird up to and including v.2.0.5 and v.2.1.3, and all v.2.5 alphas, betas and release candidates. See Tracker ticket CORE-2846.