Yum install mplayer in Fedora

After upgrade to the Fedora Core 10 and Fedora Core 12, I was surprised when yum install mplayer didn't find any package. I'm sure yum worked in Fedora Core 9 with installed Livna repository. I checked my Livna configuration once again, but there was no luck with mplayer. Something has definitely changed in the meantime. Yes, in 2008 Livna merged with two other package repositories into RPM Fusion. All packages have been moved there except one that RPM Fusion for various reasons didn't want to take. Hence Livna will remain running for the foreseeable future to ship just that package.

Before you continue reading, if you are interested in installation mplayer-gui for Fedora Core 12 / Fedora Core 13, please go to the How to install mplayer in Fedora Core 12 / Fedora Core 13 (a newer post on this site).

Today there are two main RPM repositories for the RedHat Linux family:

• http://rpmfusion.org/
• http://rpm.livna.org/

You will have to add RPM Fusion and Livna repositories if you want to install mplayer with tools like yum and PackageKit. Livna repository can be added with the following commands:

# install Livna repository with the yum command
yum install livna
# or add Livna directly with the rpm command (use --httpproxy for proxy settings)
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm

I couldn't find proxy switch for yum command, but proxy settings can be written to the /etc/yum.conf file. If you sit behind proxy, please add few lines to the yum.conf

# add proxy settings for yum
proxy=http://your.proxy.name:1234
proxy_username=your_domain\your_username
proxy_password=your_password

Fedora Core 9 with Livna repository were enough to install mplayer or vlc, because Livna contained them. Recently Livna merged with RPM Fusion and almost all rpm packages moved from Livna to the RPM Fusion. To install mplayer in Fedora Core 10, you will have to add RPM Fusion repository too. You can find detailed instruction for RPM Fusion installation on http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration and there you will find the following commands:

# add RPM Fusion repository with the rpm command
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

If you have proxy problems, try with --httpproxy. If you still have problems, you can manually download free and nonfree repositories to the local directory, and then start rpm like:

rpm -Uvh rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Now Fedora Core 10 should be able to install rpm packages from the RPM Fusion repository and Livna repository. Don't forget to add proxy settings to the /etc/yum.conf if needed.

# install RPM packages
yum install mplayer-gui
yum install xine
yum install vlc

Simple, isn't it?