Chapter 3. Install FreeTDS
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# Chapter 3. Install FreeTDS

If you install it they will stay?

| Confusing terminology

“Configuring” and “installing” don't have absolute, context-free definitions. In some circles, we install a product and then configure it. In the GNU world, we configure the package (generate the `Makefile`s), then we make install the package. In the case of a library package such as FreeTDS to install the package is to copy the files the application developer will use to their canonical locations: header files to `include`, libraries to the `lib`, documentation and man pages `share`. Install targets were specified during the build process as arguments to configure, covered in the last chapter.

For lack of a better term, this chapter describes installing the product. Put more specifically, once we're done with the package manager, we still have to tell FreeTDS about your database servers, and we still have to tell your client programs about FreeTDS.

## The local environment

After FreeTDS has been built and installed, it still doesn't know where your servers are or what particular version of Sybase or Microsoft software each one is using.

The purpose of this section is to explain how to describe your servernames to FreeTDS. FreeTDS looks up your server's attributes in `freetds.conf`. Some of the attributes can be overridden by environment variables.

One of the more important (and arcane) settings is the TDS protocol version, described next.

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OS-specific Issues | Home | Choosing a TDS protocol version