pyodbc.connect to FreeTDS connection requires explicit PORT=1433; - pyodbc

Question

I have a python script running on python 2.7 in CentOS 2.6 that connects to a Sql erver database:
pyodbc.connect("DRIVER=FreeTDS;SERVER=someServer;DATABASE=someDb;UID=myUser;PWD=superSecret;CHARSET=UTF8;TDS_Version=7.2")
That call will fail with the following: pyodbc.Error: ('08001', '[08001] [unixODBC][FreeTDS][SQL Server]Unable to connect to data source (0) (SQLDriverConnect)')
The freetds trace will say login.c:436:invalid port number
Adding PORT=1433; will cause the connection to succeed even though that is the default port number, and I added the following to my freetds.conf:
[global]
# TDS protocol version
tds version = 7.0
port = 1433
How do I make FreeTDS try port 1433 as the default port so I don't have to set it in the query string?

Answer 1

Instead of this, as you noted:
pyodbc.connect("DRIVER=FreeTDS;SERVER=someServer;DATABASE=someDb;UID=myUser;PWD=superSecret;CHARSET=UTF8;TDS_Version=7.2")
...you could put these values in your connection string, like this:
pyodbc.connect("DRIVER={FreeTDS};SERVER=someServer;PORT=1433;DATABASE=someDb;UID=myUser;PWD=superSecret;TDS_Version=7.2;CHARSET=UTF8")
For your freetds.conf configuration:
[global]
client charset = UTF-8
tds version = 7.2
[someServer]
host = someServer
port = 1433
tds version = 7.2
Both ways have always worked for me.
On a side note, I've started using this driver, made by Microsoft specifically for RedHat and CentOS (although I don't know if it will work on a version as old as yours):
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh568451%28v=sql.110%29.aspx
Best of luck!