skoczian wrote:

> This ebuild, dev-db/firebird-2.0.3.12981.0-r2 was installed
> yesterday. It changed the installation directory: instead of
> everything in /opt/firebird, the binaries are in /usr/bin, core,
> udfs etc. in /usr/share/firebird. Why this?

Because these are the directories where all other software is
located, too. I have installed _many_ software packages on
my Gentoo, and Firebird was _the_only_one_ of them which was
put into the /opt directory tree. Now it's empty again :-)

> - I want to start and stop firebird (SuperServer) manually, it
> doesn't have to run all the time. In the Firebird book I find the
> command
> ./fbmgr.bin -start -forever

The "normal" way to start and stop FB (as any other program
with Gentoo) is IMHO "/etc/init.d/firebird {start|stop}".
(Of course, this also calls "fbmgr.bin", but you do not have
to care about directories and parameters and all that.)

The /etc/bin directory doesn't even exist on my system.

-Matt