Play MP3s with RHEL 6

Solution:  Install Rhythmbox and the supporting packages.

Issue:  MP3 support is not enabled due to licensing on RHE 6.

I recently reconstructed my laptop host using RHEL 6.3 x86_64.  Things went much more smoothly this time and I have a rather usable desktop environment now ;-)

rhn-channel -v -u rhnuser@example.com -a -c rhel-x86_64-workstation-optional-6 -a -c rhel-x86_64-workstation-supplementary-6
# NOTE: you will most likely need to find out which version of the EPEL noarch.rpm is out there.  6.5 will be out of date.

 rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm

yum -y install yum-plugin-priorities

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/updates/testing/6/x86_64/rpmfusion-free-release-6-0.1.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/updates/testing/6/i386/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-6-0.1.noarch.rpm

# MISC (mostly audio-type stuff)

yum -y install id3lib mesa-demos mesa-libGL alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-bad-free gstreamer-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer-plugins-base phonon-backend-gstreamer

yum -y install gstreamer*x86_64

yum -y install lame lame-devel lame-mp3x lame-libs

yum -y install esound-devel esound-libs esound-tools libvorbis-devel alsa-plugins-*

yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg two-lame

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ALTERNATE ENDING

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Solution:  Install XMMS and the supporting packages.

Issue:  MP3 support is not enabled due to licensing on RHEL.

While I was researching how to resolve this particular issue I was quite disappointed that I could only find solutions which involved adding 3rd-party repo's to your system.  The only way I want to add an entire repo is if it is Red Hat supported, or... at a minimum.. recognized by Red Hat.  I added Google and Adobe repo's and then the EPEL repo.

Unfortunately this procedure is not inclusive of ALL the necessary steps, because my default built would have included a number of packages (glib2, gtk, etc...).  But, this should get you going.  NOTE: This was done on RHEL 6.2 - the EPEL package will be out-of-date and you will need to browse the directory to figure out what RPM is current.

# rhn-channel -v -u rhnuser@example.com -a -c rhel-x86_64-workstation-optional-6 -a -c rhel-x86_64-workstation-supplementary-6

# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm

# yum -y install yum-plugin-priorities

# rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/updates/testing/6/x86_64/rpmfusion-free-release-6-0.1.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/updates/testing/6/i386/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-6-0.1.noarch.rpm

# Enable MP3 playback
yum -y install esound-devel esound-libs esound-tools libvorbis-devel alsa-plugins-*
cd
mkdir XMMS; cd XMMS
wget http://www.xmms.org/files/1.2.x/xmms-1.2.11.tar.gz
wget http://files.softicons.com/download/system-icons/human-o2-icons-by-oliver-scholtz/png/32x32/apps/xmms.png
cp xmms.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/
tar -xvzf xmms-1.2.11.tar.gz
cd  xmms-1.2.11
./configure && make && make install

I don't recommend the following... (but I thought I would leave up here, as I did try using rpmforge)

Alternate Solution:  Use the rpmforge repo.
I don't like going this route as it seems to put my system in a position for future issues. So, I add the repo - add my packages and then disable the repo.  Hopefully this will not cause too much turmoil on my box...

# yum -y install yum-priorities
# rpm -ivh http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
# yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-bad
# mv /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo.disabled
You should now be able to fire up rhythmbox.