Hi there. Complete newbie to firebird, and I'm trying to set it up on
my eeepc, which is also new and I don't have that much linux
experience, so bear with me. I'll try to present my problem in a clear
way despite all these strikes against me.

So, I installed the firebird2-classic-server package using Synaptic,
and all of that seems to have worked well. However, following the
instructions here, http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/qsg2-installing.html
under "Server check: Linux and other Unices", I see no indication that
fbguard or fbserver, or fb_inet_server is running. There aren't any
instructions on how to troubleshoot or resolve this in the quick start
guide.

For what it's worth, when I skip ahead and try to issue a gsec command
anyway, I get the following results:
operating system directive open failed
Permission denied
unable to open database

So what's the best way to get it running from here? If there's
documentation that I should be looking at, I'd appreciate any help on
how to find the most relevant material, thanks.