Installing Firebird 2.5 64-bit on CentOS 6.2

Media: burn DVD with disk #1 of CentOS 6.2 installer

Boot to the DVD

During installation, from the radio button list, select Database Server (and later turn off the 4 default database choices)
Unselect a few things that seem unnecessary, like debugging features and php
Select all the Desktop options, plus X Windows

Create one user with a secure password; that user will have a GUI (KDE). Advice: use an uncommon name for your user.

After the dust settles, sort out networking. The GUI has a feature for that, System > Preferences > Network. ETH1 is the 2nd cat5 network jack. ETH0 is the 1st one (left to right, looking at the back of the SuperMicro 1u server). Fill in the MANUAL settings to fix the ip, and make sure to check the box [x] connect automatically.

Test the network by opening Applications> System Tools > Konsole.

cd /sbin
./ifconfig

That will show you what is running on ETH1 and it should include your static ip number.

Now, System > Administration > Firewall. Review carefully, of course. Open port 3050 tcp and 3050 udp. Paranoid people may want to do this before turning on the network; however the default settings are pretty tight. Advice: use strong passwords!

At this point, you should be able to connect to the server using Putty.

YUM UPDATE would be next, lowercase of course.

Note: installing RPMs from http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/firebird-2-5/ did not work for me. Specifically, 64-bit failed and 32-bit worked but is not what I want.

Install Firebird SQL via YUM

rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/firebird-superserver-2.5.2.26539.0-2.el6.i686.rpm
  (( If that URL becomes obsolete, try looking at EPEL - F for Firebird or http://fedoraproject.org/ ))

yum install firebird firebird-superserver

Start Firebird Service on Linux

(Thanks Philippe Makowski for next 2 steps)

use as root :
/sbin/service firebird-superserver start

If you want to have firebird Superserver started at each boot, as root :
chkconfig --level 345 firebird-superserver on

( Thanks http://www.destructor.de/firebird/gsec.htm for gsec syntax )

cd /usr/lib64/firebird/bin
./gsec -user SYSDBA -password masterkey -modify sysdba -pw MyKey37

cd /etc/firebird
vi aliases.conf
vi firebird.conf
(database access none)

I put my database files in /var/firebirddata

Need to set permissions there for the firebird user

chmod o+r firebirddata
chmod o+w firebirddata
chmod o+x firebirddata

After that, IB_SQL (IBObjects GUI tools) will create a database successfully
in /var/firebirddata, based on the alias created above.

Static IP Change
( Thanks to http://www.lifelinux.com/how-to-configure-static-ip-address-on-centos/ for the following )

To set the static ip for the ethernet connection, using the console:

# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
# ls -la | grep ifcfg-
# vi ifcfg-eth1

System Information
cat /proc/cpuinfo - Displays CPU info

cat /proc/meminfo - Displays memory info

also: dpmidecode especially on Dell, HP and IBM hardware

free -mt # find out how much RAM

Less is More - Uninstalling Unused Services 
See  Minimal Services on CentOS 5 Mini-HowTo

Hope this helps you!