I got Firebird working how I wanted. Here is what is needed to run
Firebird in a truely embedded fashion on Linux:

1. You need a directory for a local Firebird environment (I just used
~/firebird for my testing) and it needs these files:

firebird.msg
bin/fb_lock_mgr
security.fdb
firebird.conf
intl/fbintl
libfbembed.so

2. The firebird.conf just needs to have one line with RootDirectory=?
where ? is the directory you put the files.

3. The security.fdb file can be setup with a standard password for
sysdba or other users as needed but its really a dummy and shouldn't be
considered to be providing any real security.

4. In your code you need to set the FIREBIRD environment variable to
point to the directory where you setup the local Firebird environment.

5. The permissions on the files need to all be such that the user
running your application can read the files.

Thats it I think and the end result is closer to the embedded status of
the Windows version except you have to have the security.fdb database
and the fb_lock_mgr. Setting the permissions this way will mess up
access to the database from other users or the network server but thats
what I wanted so thats fine.

Thanks for the help given here by Ann, Helen, and David!

--
Brad Pepers
brad@...