Helen, Thank you for the extra details. I did end up doing a complete reinstall and there was no longer any issue with gsec. It is all working now.
Recap: CentOS 6.2 did not need anything extra in the /etc/hosts file as it turns out, at least not with the package choices that I made. My "problem" with localhost was caused by me trying to run "bin/fbsvcmgr -start" instead of starting the firebird superserver service from /sbin service... -Ann
