Sybase Installation Failed

Almost at the end of the installation, installation fails with error and aborts the installation of the Sybase. The situation repeats and ends always in the same way.What can cause this error?

The installation of Sybase is indeed tricky. Before I succeeded with it, I have failed 1000 times. The successful one installation was the 1001st trial :)

How to install "Interactive SQL"

We sometimes confuse two different pieces of software:

• Interactive SQL which supports Sybase
• SQL Central which supports SQL Anywhere

To connect to SAP ASE / Sybase  you need to have "Interactive SQL", not SQL Central.

There is no separate download of Interactive SQL, or at least I'm not aware of such a package. What you need to have is the full installation of the package, however you don't need to install the entire Sybase suit on your windows machine. During the installation only the client tools should be selected.

To download SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise in Evaluation or Developer edition you need to register on SAP website and ask for the download link. This can be done using:

https://www.sap.com/cmp/syb/crm-xu15-int-asewindm/index.html?url_id=text-us-sapcom-ase-trial-software

As internet is not static, with time this link may stop working and you will need to look for the downloads using a web search engine. This is ... politics of SAP.  See also:

https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/3565945

This is inconvenient, specially when you are playing with Linux/Unix installation. Usually one of the final steps is to configure client, so that it can work with the server. When you install server you usually download only the Linux/Unix Sybase install files. So in such case you should download the Windows install files and from it I installed the Windows Sybase client.

Those files should be available in the SDK FOR SAP ASE 16.0

Startup script to run Sybase ASE automatically after unix booting

Unfortunately after installation when the server is rebooted, Sybase is not starting automatically. The  problem is, that Sybase installation is done using a non privileged account, so there is no way to modify system files starting Sybase automatically.

Below you can find a script, that can be used to automatically manage Sybase on Linux machine and it can be probably also used on other Unix machines. You can call it with start or stop or restart parameter, so this is a good candidate to use it with every systemd compatible operating system.

If you would like to have Sybase starting after each OS boot perform following configuration. Create a service file and save it as /etc/systemd/sysctl/sybase.service. If required change the path to point to correct location of the scrip sybase_start

[Unit]
Description=SYBASE ASE
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/sap/sybase_start start
Type=forking
PIDFile=/opt/sap/sybase.pid
ExecStop=/opt/sap/sybase_start stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target