Differences between upstream and the Fedora package =================================================== * Firebird utilities gbak,gsec,gfix,and nbackup have a symlink in /usr/bin In /usr/bin you have also isql-fb symlinked to Firebird isql. We can't name it isql to avoid conflict with isql from UNIX-ODBC In /usr/bin you have also gstat-fb symlinked to Firebird gstat. We can't name it gstat to avoid conflict with gstat from Ganglia-gmond * According to Fedora packaging rules, firebird service is not started automatically. You need to start it, as root : for SuperServer : systemctl start firebird-superserver.service for SuperClassic : systemctl start firebird-superclassic.service for Classic : systemctl start firebird-classic.socket If you want to have firebird started at each boot, as root : for SuperServer : systemctl enable firebird-superserver.service for SuperClassic : systemctl enable firebird-superclassic.service for Classic : systemctl enable firebird-classic.socket * Fedora packages do not use, nor contain the pre-supplied sources for libicu. Fedora packages are used instead. * POSSIBLE INCOMPATIBILITY In incides on text-based columns (CHAR/VARCHAR), Firebird uses ICU to get binary-comparable sequences (collations). These collations may be different in different ICU versions. In Firebird 2.5 upstream always uses the bundled ICU library. Firebird packages use the Firebird-packaged libicu*. Unfortunately, this may lead to incompatibilities in the binary index representation (on disk) between databases created by Fedora-packaged Firebird, and upstream. This can also lead to incompatibilities when the Firebird packages are re-built using different version of the system-wide ICU library One way to fix this is to backup and restore all databases created with ICU version different from the one currently installed on the system. Another is to re-generate all indices that contain a text-based columns.