FreeTDS doesn't use configured tds version

freetds v0.91 - tds version mismatched

I want to connect to a Windows SQL Server with FreeBSD on Ubuntu 14.04. The FreeTDS is installed using apt-get. I tried different tds version with following commands:

$ TDSVER=7.0 tsql -H xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -U xxxx -p 1433 -P xxxxxxx

The log file shows:

...
net.c:205:Connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port 1433 (TDS version 7.0)
net.c:270:tds_open_socket: connect(2) returned "Operation now in progress"
net.c:310:tds_open_socket() succeeded
...

No problem here. But if I change TDSVER to 7.4:

$ TDSVER=7.4 tsql -H xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -U xxxx -p 1433 -P xxxxxxx

The TDS version becomes 4.2?

...
net.c:205:Connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port 1433 (TDS version 4.2)
net.c:270:tds_open_socket: connect(2) returned "Operation now in progress"
net.c:310:tds_open_socket() succeeded
...

The output of command $ tsql -C is :

Compile-time settings (established with the "configure" script)
                            Version: freetds v0.91
             freetds.conf directory: /etc/freetds
     MS db-lib source compatibility: no
        Sybase binary compatibility: yes
                      Thread safety: yes
                      iconv library: yes
                        TDS version: 4.2
                              iODBC: no
                           unixodbc: yes
              SSPI "trusted" logins: no
                           Kerberos: yes

I tried to configure tds version in ~/.freetds.conf, the results are the same.

freetds v1.00.9 - matched

Then I tried to build the version downloaded from git and install under my home folder. It seems the version is matched:

$ TDSVER=7.4 .local/bin/tsql -H xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -U xxxx -p 1433 -P xxxxxxx

...
iconv.c:384:tds_iconv_open: done
net.c:216:Connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port 1433 (TDS version 7.4)
net.c:242:tds_open_socket: connect(2) returned "Operation now in progress"
net.c:343:tds_open_socket() succeeded
...

The output of $ .local/bin/tsql -C is:

Compile-time settings (established with the "configure" script)
                            Version: freetds v1.00.9
             freetds.conf directory: /home/bgdata/.local/etc
     MS db-lib source compatibility: no
        Sybase binary compatibility: no
                      Thread safety: yes
                      iconv library: yes
                        TDS version: auto
                              iODBC: no
                           unixodbc: yes
              SSPI "trusted" logins: no
                           Kerberos: no
                            OpenSSL: no
                             GnuTLS: no
                               MARS: no

Is that a bug of v0.91 or I did something wrong? Thanks.

Solution

FreeTDS 0.91 doesn't support TDS Version 7.4. I've got a pull request to hopefully make this more clear in the documentation:

https://github.com/FreeTDS/freetds/pull/71/files

FreeTDS 1.0+ supports up to TDS version 7.4
FreeTDS 0.95 supports up to TDS version 7.3
FreeTDS 0.91 supports up to TDS version 7.2

Also, never use 8.0 unless you're using a very old version of FreeTDS (which you shouldn't be at this point). That's a long story also covered in the documentation, but there are lots of "guides" around the web recommending it. It reverts to version 7.0 and can create problems.