hey guys, im new to linux and still trying to become comfortable with it. (at the moment i honestly feeling hadicapped using it)
i would love to be able to do so much more with it, but i am having a bit of a hard time finding where to start. I have found a few worthwhile sites, but it would be a great help if someone could post some good learning sites/books (perferably sites) to learn from the ground up.

Now on to the problem. As the subject line says, i am having a bit of trouble with rh9. I am confident you guys hear this one alot but i cant play mp3s, which "forces" me to spend alot of time away from linux (i find it really boring with out tunes). My buddy already helped me mount some of my windows partitions so i can transfer over the mp3s. So to try and get around the not playable mp3 thing, my friend advised me to install a rpm called mpg123 which suspossedly gets around said mp3 problem. BUT it says i already have this installed (its a little blurry in my mind as i gave up because of anger and this is the first time i returned in a couple days) i remebered i had it working briefly but it wasnt in xmms it was in something else. SO to bring you up to today, i tryed to delete it throught the add remove programs thing, and it says it cannot find a required file. i also tryed to play a cd (non mp3) however it just locks up xmms and i have to close it through the system monitor.

So i think what i am asking for is a way to delete it, and reinstall it so everything will work hunky dory and i will live happily ever after. (untill of course i screw something else up then i will have to come and harrass you guy some more )
i also found this i dont know if it would be any help to you guys in my situation.
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hi i have sound problems with Redhat 9 that i just installed a few hours ago
during post installation it detected my sound card and was able to play some sample sound.
I tried playing some mp3's but Redhat doesnt support mp3's so i downloaded the mpg123 plugin for xmms from xmms.org and then tried to play an mp3 but i got an error
My soundcard is VT8233 AC97 Audio Controller made by VIA

REPLY
had the same problem so I tried to start xmms as an "new" user and i was able to play mp3's! So i mentioned that it would be an problem in /$home/.xmms/ so I rm -r ed this dir and now it works for my user too. I hope this will fix your problem.
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this is the same soundcard as me
well the guy who replied probably had some helpful tips, but he might as well be speaking spanish because i would understand it just as much.

thanks for the time it took you to read this, and your help ahead of time
delux
ps and sorry for the length

reinstalling software on linux is rarely the solution, so lets focus more on the sound issue.

An error message would be helpful, but in the absence lets cover some ground.
you run mpg123 by changing to the directory with mp3s in it, and typing mpg123 *.mp3 (for instance). does it say something why it doesn't run? like say that /dev/dsp does not exist or permission denied...

XMMS is a little more complex, since it is selective in how it accesses your sound system, so if you are running in KDE and have arts start (arts being a sound server) then you need to configure XMMS to use the arts output plugin, if you use the kernel compiled driver or oss you should switch xmms to the oss plugin.

/dev/dsp is the sound device so you might need to change permissions to it, and it's absence would indicate the sound card is not configured. One of the RedHat guys may have input on that. if not alsa is a good word to google. (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)

lastly to answer your original question
man rpm
give you all manner of information on how to use redhat's package manager which i'd guess is what you are using. If you are compiling mpg123 from source, make install almost certainly will over ride the existing one.

Try to get some error messages out of your sound system, it gives us a better starting point.

For your soundcard run redhat-config-sound and see if your soundcard shows up, if not this tool should help you configure your sound.

As for the mpg123 plugin for XMMS, first run this command in the console or virtual console:

rpm -qa | grep mpg the right name for the rpm should come up then type in rpm -e (filename exactly as listed) this should remove the plugin then ensure you have the mpg123 plugin then rpm -ihv mpg123.rpm this should re-install the plugin.

Of course if you have no sound now you may have the plugin installed properly but since your sound isn't setup then it will seem as if you can't play mp3s. Also when you open XMMS click the top left corner go into I believe configuration, I'm not exactly sure since I'm on a Windows machine, and ensure you are using the OSS plugin if using GNOME or arts plugin if using KDE.

Hopefully this sheds some more light on the situation, as far as information just do a Google search for any topic you might need more info on and many Websites come up, but I would suggest just break down and buy a book such as Red Hat bible.

Good luck and hope this helps

hey its me again, im pretty sure the sound is working because my sound effects work when when im in KDE, the error i get says three things, one is that my speakers arent plugged in, or my soundcard isnt configured, or something else. I thought they all werent true due to the fact i was getting sound from other programs.

Also i tryed the rpm -e (filename exactly as listed) but it seemed to just hang and i left it for a while and it just hanged bash. I was root and in the directory /
thanks for your help guys.
delux