HI-

I kind of solved the problem but not really. I just used super-classic.

now i can stop and start the server at will.

To help someone else out if they come across this in fedora24 I do:

[root@localhost system]# systemctl start firebird-superclassic.service
[root@localhost system]# top -b -n1 | grep fb
 4102 firebird  20   0   29272    372      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 fbguard
 4103 firebird  20   0  101544  10020   8416 S   0.0  0.3   0:00.00 fb_smp_serv+
[root@localhost system]# systemctl stop firebird-superclassic.service
[root@localhost system]# top -b -n1 | grep fb

I was getting error messages trying to start and stop the server with classic.

With classic each process starts its own server. I think you can use kill or another method.
Maybe when the client disconnects they dissapear? Not sure about classic.
I will just stick with superclassic for now.

Hope that is correct and it helps someone.

thx. -jim