FLAP on Ferora 11

Having tried several other setups, Fedora came up on the list of distributions to try out. I think the main problem that I have been having is with the Desktop rather then the core Linux, and the developments in KDE seem to be creating more problems thatn they are solving. Fedora installs with Gnome by default, and this does seem to make things a lot more stable - once one gets used to the different way of working.
The basic Fedora 11 distribution seems to have almost everything I need out of the box, including all of my Eclipse development packages without the need to update outside the package handler. EXCEPT ... php-interbase is currently still in development repository, but it does seem to run happily, so the Test Updates software source needs selecting in addition to the updates one. This is accessed via System->Administration->Software Sources, and once Test Updates is enabled in the list, PHP5.2.10 will install rather than 5.2.9.
( Need to find a way to ensure that 5.3 will not be installed at present! This causes a number of incompatibilities with legacy sode :( )
I started from a clean ISODVD download from the fedora project and this provided most of the things I needed just from the base install - having selected 'Server' functions in addition to the 'office' pacackages. I would go without the office packages if this was only going to be a server machine.
Having installed and updated the base build, the test repository was added, and then Firebird (classic), Flamerobin and php-interbase ( along with a few other useful php packages ). These all installed happily, but did not seem to start automatically. It was necessary to enable Apache service before it would start, but the xinid service for Firebird Classic did start after a reboot, but can be started manually from the services panel System->Administration->Services.
A couple of additional steps were required to allow things to run. Since Fedora11 has SELinux installed as standard, this needs to be disabled until we can identify the correct settings to allow Apache to access port 3050 while it is running. Initially I've added inetd_child_port_t Network port entries for 3050, but obviously something else needs to be added in addition. The first page of System->Administration->SELinux Management needs System Default Enforcing Mode switched to 'Disabled' to allow Apache to access Firebird. ( This does not prevent Flamerobin from accessing Firebird )
Port 3050 also needs to be opened in the firewall along with port 80 ( and possibly https:443 ) if you want to access either server remotely. System->Administration->Firewall gives access to the firewall control panel, with http being listed in the Trusted services page, and port 3050 can be found in the 'Add' list of Other Ports page.
One more area that needs a little more investigation is the fact that MySQL can not be removed without loosing a lot of other packages as well, including OpenOffice. Why there should be a dependency on THAT is a mystery.

Locations

As with all distributions, there are subtle differences in the location of config and data files for the installations, and

is no different in this.

Firebird

Program ... /usr/lib64/firebird/bin ( link to /usr/lib64/firebird/bin-classic or bin-super )

Config ... /etc/firebird/ ( linked from /usr/lib64/firebird/ )

DataRoot ... /var/lib/firebird/data/

Apache

Program ... ?

Extensions ... /usr/lib64/httpd/modules

Config ... /etc/httpd/conf

DocumentRoot ... /var/www/html

PHP

Extensions ... /usr/lib64/php/modules

PEAR ... /usr/lib64/php/pear ( not yet checked adding pear modules )

Config ... /etc/php.d - Has a simple .ini file for each extension ( which would benefit from additional extension related options )

Mysql is enabled by default, but removing the relevent .ini files allows this to be disabled again.

Useful Additions

phpinfo.php

ibtest.php

Installing both of these in the DocumentRoot would make a lot of sense as an addition to the php-interbase installer.