What do you do with .rpm.bin files? I recently downloaded one (not my first however) from Java.com so I can get a JVM up on my rh8 box here. I've gotten the hang of running rpms via the console, but what do I do with a rpm.bin? I tried running this through file roller as well as the typical rpm command.

.bin means binary..... its executable
sh /path/to/the/bin/file.bin
will run it.

Usually it is an RPM file that has some other stuff wrapped around it. I have seen .rpm.bin files that are basic scripts that contain the RPM file at the end (think of it like this: you make a script, you have an RPM file, you cat them together) and calls a program (I forget what it is, and I can't look now as I'm not at my Linux box) that extracts the RPM from the end of the file and then installs it. Ingenious!

Personally, when I come across one of these, I find the command to extract the RPM, and then do it myself so I can save the RPM file without all the clutter of the script.

in java's case, the .bin requires you to agree to license agreement before it spits out the rpm for you to use...

Yeah, but that is part of the script that comes before the RPM file. If you manually extract the RPM, then you don't need to run the script part of the file, ever.

In anycase, as a general rule, anything that ends in .bin, whether it is a true binary executable or a script, it needs to have eXecutable permissions (chmod +x filename.bin) and then you can run it with ./filename.bin (and yes, the dot slash is important - it tells it to run programme filename.bin from the current directory).