Apache will not connect to SQL Server with PHP - php

Question

I'm trying to open a connection to a SQL Server 2008 on a windows computer from an apache linux server via php. I've opened up the appropriate port on the firewall, but I am getting the vaguest error
Warning: mssql_connect() [function.mssql-connect]: Unable to connect to server: xxx.xxx.xx.xxx,xxxx
with:
$myServer = "xxx.xxx.xx.xxx,1433"; //with port number; tried both backslash and colon
$myUser = "un";
$myPass = "pw";
$myDB = "db";
//connection to the database
$dbhandle = mssql_connect($myServer, $myUser, $myPass)
or die( mssql_get_last_message());
Is there some way to get a more specific error message? Or some way that I can test to see if the two computers are communicating at all so I can try to begin to localize the problem?

Answer 1

Here's the code I use to connect PHP to MSSQL from Ubuntu machines to Windows SQL Server, I don't know if it will help you or not but this code is up and running successfully right now so I know it works in our environment...
As you can see, I use PDO rather than the mssql_* functions. On Ubuntu I needed to install the php5-sybase package to get the dblib driver.
PHP:
<?php
try{
$con = new PDO("dblib:dbname=$dbname;host=$servername", $username, $password);
}catch(PDOException $e){
echo 'Failed to connect to database: ' . $e->getMessage() . "\n";
exit;
}
?>
/etc/odbc.ini
# Define a connection to the MSSQL server.
# The Description can be whatever we want it to be.
# The Driver value must match what we have defined in /etc/odbcinst.ini
# The Database name must be the name of the database this connection will connect to.
# The ServerName is the name we defined in /etc/freetds/freetds.conf
# The TDS_Version should match what we defined in /etc/freetds/freetds.conf
[mssqldb]
Description = MSSQL Server
Driver = freetds
Database = MyDB
ServerName = mssqldb
TDS_Version = 8.0
/etc/odbcinst.ini
# Define where to find the driver for the Free TDS connections.
[freetds]
Description = MS SQL database access with Free TDS
Driver = /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libtdsodbc.so
Setup = /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libtdsS.so
UsageCount = 1
/etc/freetds/freetds.conf
[global]
# If you get out-of-memory errors, it may mean that your client
# is trying to allocate a huge buffer for a TEXT field.
# Try setting 'text size' to a more reasonable limit
text size = 64512
# Define a connection to the MSSQL server.
[mssqldb]
host = mssqldb
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0

Answer 2

I ran into the same problem today. This works for me:
Instead of this
$myServer = "xxx.xxx.xx.xxx,1433"; //with port number; tried both backslash and colon
try this:
$myServer = "mssqldb"; //must correspond to [entry] in freetds.conf file
In your case, I'd rename the entry and use the fully qualified hostname to the entry in the config file just for clarity
# Define a connection to the MSSQL server.
[mssqldbAlias]
host = mssqldb.mydomain.com
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0
The first argument in the call to mssql_connect() must correspond to an [entry] in the freetds.conf file.
So your call becomes
$myServer = "mssqldbAlias";
//connection to the database
$dbhandle = mssql_connect($myServer, $myUser, $myPass)
or die( mssql_get_last_message());