Hmmm yes, ok levity wasn't my intent I was just a little nonplussed, after all I did
follow the Sun instructions to the letter

they obviously didn't think the ./ important enough to include in their install instructions.
However I did miss the suggestion to use ./ in the last post so apologies
thanks for your replies, once I put the ./ everything was ok and I ran
[root@jekyll java]# rpm -iv j2re-1_4_2_04-linux-i586.rpm
Preparing packages for installation...
j2re-1.4.2_04-fcs
so am assuming evrything is installed now.
once again thanks for the help.
Bob