[pkg-firebird-general] Bug#690769: Cannot start trace on a database due to trace plugin failing to initialize UNICODE collation

[Konstantin Khomoutov]

Package: firebird2.5-classic
Version: 2.5.0.26054~ReleaseCandidate3.ds2-1+b1
Severity: normal

When I'm trying to start a trace using something like this

# cat >/tmp/fb-trace
<database rt>
 enabled true
 log_connections true
 log_transactions true
</database>
^D
# fbtracemgr -se localhost:service_mgr -user sysdba \
    -fe /dev/stdin -start -name test -config /tmp/fb-trace

The trace seemingly starts (fbtracemgr is connected to the terminal
and is running) but nothing is printed even though there's
activity in the database being monitored, and in the firebird server
log I have a message like this:

aquinas Wed Oct 17 14:24:20 2012
        Trace plugin libfbtrace.so returned error on call trace_create.
        Error details: cannot initialize UNICODE collation to use in
trace plugin

I managed to find an upstream bug report [1], from which it follows
that certain versions in Ubuntu are also affected (and they are
supposedly just have been pulled from Debian), and that the real
culprit is the ICU v4.4 package with which the libfbembed2.5 is linked.

The end result is that it seemingly impossible to run a trace against
a Firebird 2.5 instance in Squeeze.

I do know that this bug report is somewhat late to the party as Squeeze
is not so long from becoming the new oldstable, but possibly you could
suggest a workaround.

P.S.
Currently I'm trying to build a Squeeze back port of ICU 4.8 to try
convincing Firebird to use it as suggested  in [1], by adding
icu_versions = 4.2
to fbintl.conf.
I'm not sure this will work as Firebird in Debian is probably built
with --with-system-icu, but will report back if I'll succeed in doing
this.

1. http://tracker.firebirdsql.org/browse/CORE-3281