Hi,

>So, I removed the previous installation and decided on installing
>firebird 2.1 classic. I followed the directions to a T.
>It still does not work. I do not get any errors, but the firebird
>server does not start up. If I try starting it manually with:
>sudo /etc/init.d/firebird2.1-classic start

Firebird Classic has no service/deamon listening, it depends on xinetd to do
so. Than, there should have no /etc/init.d/firebird at all.

You must have xinetd inatalled and running and you can setup firebird/xinetd
script on /etc/xinetd.d/firebird ... use following to check on xinetd:

# service xinetd status


I've never used unduntu, but... doesn't official Firebird tarbal install
work for you? On most distros I've used I found to be very straight forward.

Good luck!

Regards,
Anderson Farias