This is a two part question. And as most everyone in here im bran spankin new to linux.

Im trying to install winrar for linux on Fedora core2, everytime i try the ./makefile it gives me the error bellow.

[freddy@localhost temp]$ ./Makefile
bash: ./Makefile: Permission denied

Second im trying to get mp3 to play on my pc. now i downloaded thexmms-1.2.10.tar.bz2 and the files has an error at the end of the extraction. so i downloaded the .rpm however i have no clue how to extract or install off of an rpm

thanks

For your first question: a makefile is not meant to be executed directly. The Makefile is read by another program as instructions for compiling source code. Typically, the sequence for compiling and installing source code is like this:
1. Download the source code
2. Un-tar the source code
3. Cd into the source code directory
4. Run ./configure
5. Run make
6. Run make install <- need to do this as root

However, those are just general instructions. You'll need to check any README or INSTALL files that come with the software. They'll detail any specific steps you have to take.

For your second question: You probably already have xmms installed. At least, Red Hat 8 and Red Hat 9 came with it automatically. To find out, open a command line and execute which xmms. If you get any text, then it's already installed. For Red Hat 8 and 9, you had to download an rpm to enable mp3 playback. Red Hat left it out for some licensing problem (don't remember exactly). Anyway, www.xmms.org had the rpm to enable mp3 support on their webpage las I looked.

If you still need to install xmms. You can try compiling it from source, and posting the error you get if you run into problems.

If you want to install it via rpm, the basic command is rpm -i rpm_filename
And that's applicable for the xmms package and the mp3 support (if you need to install it).

when i ran the which xmms it gave me a path

/usr/bin/xmms

so im taking it that it is installed on my pc. if it is what do i need to do to enable mp3 playback?

and thank you

Long story short, I checked the xmms webpage, and couldn't easily find the prm necessary to enable mp3 playback support. I did, however, a search on Google, and came up with this site (one of many different ones): readyadmin

On that page, there's a "how do I enable mp3 playback" question for Fedora Core 2. It boils down to running this command (as root):
rpm -ivh http://readyadmin.com/custom/software/xmms-mp3-1.2.10-0.lvn.2.2.i386.rpm

If you're paranoid (like me), then you might want to do a google search to see if there are other sites offering the same rpm file. Or you might simply want to download it to have a copy for yourself "just in case". In that case, just change the "http" portion of the rpm command above into the full path and filename of the rpm file you downloaded.

After that, you should be able to start up xmms through the application menu or from the command line, and mp3s should play like expected.