How to Add Multimedia Support to Oracle, RHEL, and Rocky Linux
Red Hat and Multimedia
Red Hat removed MP3 support from their distribution of Linux due to patent licensing and conflicts between patent licenses and the licenses of application source code. This happened all the way back in September 2002 when Red Hat 8.0 came out. Red Hat provided an explanation on their site back in 2003-2008. It seems that they no longer even provide an explanation. You simply don't get the codecs, the encoding and decoding shared libraries, with Red Hat. Therefore you don't get them with clones like Rocky Linux or with derivatives like Oracle Linux. There are ways around this. You can add MP3 and other codecs for audio and video players and other tools. This page explains how to do that.
Red Hat's decision is understandable. There is very little desire to play audio or video on the console of a server for which you're paying up to US $3,500 per CPU socket pair per year. What does make sense is to store media files on a file server that sits in the server room. Then your Ubuntu (or macOS, or Windows) desktop connects to that file server as an NFS client, and you do the playing on that desktop client.
The Workarounds Change
The details for doing this have changed from year to year as Linux software package repositories (or repos) have variously lost support, been renamed, become untrustworthy, or disappeared. Some are merely outdated, like the DAG repo for RHEL 2.1 through 5, and the rpm.livna.org repo that merged with others into RPM Fusion and supported RHEL 5 and 6. Then there was the SourceForge site, which became a hive of malware and malicious advertising in 2013-2016. SourceForge is slowly coming back, but it's not useful for solving this problem.
RPMForge became pkgs.repoforge.org, and now
both are unmaintained.
Its
Wikipedia page
begins:
RepoForge (formerly RPMforge) is a dead project.
It is not maintained. DO NOT USE.
That page has a link to a
CentOS page
which says:
RPMForge/RepoForge is a dead project.
It is not maintained. DO NOT USE.
audacious audio player, listening to the Radio Echoes MP3 stream from Thessaloniki
Overview of the Fix
The following procedure works with CentOS / RHEL 7, and is said to also work on Oracle Linux and Scientific Linux. This example walks through the steps followed immediately after installing CentOS from the "Everything" DVD ISO image.
We will add two repo definitions. The first is for EPEL, or Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. This repo is maintained by the Fedora project.
Travel inRomania
The second is the
Nux Dextop
repo, a desktop and multimedia-oriented RPM collection.
This repo has been in use since 2012 for the RHEL 6
packages, and since early 2016 for the RHEL 7 packages.
No, nothing is entirely risk-free, but this seems to
be a very good and useful software collection.
The fact that it's at a .ro domain will
freak out the paranoid and xenophobic.
Do be careful to verify the PGP public key in the following steps. You want to get the real Nux collection. DNS cache poisoning, other network man-in-the-middle attacks, and spear-phishing attacks (as in "Click here to start adding MP3/MPEG capability to Red Hat") could all lead you to fake sites with malware.
Your remaining problem is to decide whether you trust me as a person to give you advice, and my site as a channel for communicating that advice...
Ready? Here we go.
See What You Have So Far
As I said, I had just installed CentOS from the 7.2.1511 Everything DVD ISO image. Let's see what that has set up for software repositories.
[root@centos ~]# yum repolist Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: centos.mbni.med.umich.edu * extras: mirror.tzulo.com * updates: mirror.tzulo.com repo id repo name status base/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Base 9,363 extras/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Extras 435 updates/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Updates 418 repolist: 10,216
I am interested in the Chrome browser, although I'm never
certain if it's going to be called chrome
or chromium or maybe something like
stable-chrome-browser or whatever.
I am also interested in any MP3 and MPEG codecs and players,
the Mplayer and VLC video players,
NTFS support,
the Lyx WYSIWIG editor for LaTeX,
and the libdvdcss package so I can
make a backup copy of a DVD
that I own.
NTFS-3G seems to be quite safe for R/W use, despite the dire warnings we still encounter when configuring a kernel build. Experimentation shows that I don't need NTFS support in the kernel itself in order to mount NTFS file systems with the FUSE (or File System in Userspace) utilities. But I will want the NTFS user-space programs.
[root@centos7 ~]# df -hT /run/media/cromwell/EXTERNAL Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb1 fuseblk 932G 116M 932G 1% /run/media/cromwell/EXTERNAL [root@centos7 ~]# egrep 'NTFS|FUSE' /boot/config* CONFIG_FUSE_FS=m # CONFIG_NTFS_FS is not set
My use of NTFS is purely for convenience, moving data on portable media. I don't rely on NTFS for archival storage.
Let's see what, if any, of the desired components are included with RHEL/Rocky/CentOS:
[root@centos ~]# yum list | egrep 'chrome|chromium|mp3|mpeg|mpg|vlc|lyx|skype|mplayer|libdvdcss|ntfs' xorg-x11-drv-openchrome.i686 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome.x86_64 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-devel.i686 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-devel.x86_64 0.3.3-14.el7 base
That's disappointing. Let's add software repositories that provide the desired packages.
Let's start by adding EPEL, the Fedora-hosted Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux repo. First, we need to get the Fedora PGP public key:
[root@centos ~]# wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server -- 2016-03-17 09:34:19-- https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server Resolving dl.fedoraproject.org (dl.fedoraproject.org)... 209.132.181.26, 209.132.181.27, 209.132.181.23, ... Connecting to dl.fedoraproject.org (dl.fedoraproject.org)|209.132.181.26|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1662 (1.6K) Saving to: 'RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server' 100%[======================================>] 1,662 --.-K/s in 0s 2016-03-17 09:34:19 (54.1 MB/s) - 'RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server' saved [1662/1662]
The wget program connected to somewhere
and got something.
Yes, it used HTTPS, but I'm not comfortable with simply
trusting wget to do the right thing.
The wget manual
says that it verifies the certificate
against the authorities, but it's not clear how it
really does that.
Besides, using HTTPS for the connection provides
no guarantee that the site has not been
hacked and its contents replaced with malware.
So, I'm going to check the SHA-2-256 hash of what I downloaded. Here is what I got, you should have precisely the same value:
[root@centos ~]# openssl sha256 RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server
SHA256(RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server)= 028b9accc59bab1d21f2f3f544df5469910581e728a64fd8c411a725a82300c2
If you got exactly the same SHA-2-256 hash output, add the key to your RPM database:
[root@centos ~]# rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7Server
Now our subsequent
rpm
and
yum
commands can verify the digital signatures embedded within
packages downloaded from the EPEL repo.
So, let's first
browse the collection
and then download and install the most recent available
epel-release package.
Change the 7-9 release number
in the following when you find a newer one on the site.
And please
let me know
that I need to update this page...
[root@centos ~]# rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7Server/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
Retrieving https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7Server/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
Preparing... ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing...
1:epel-release-7-9 ################################# [100%]
That will have added a new file
/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo"
which contains new repo definitions.
Let's get an updated list of the repos and the
packages of possible interest.
Notice that the total number of packages has roughly
doubled, from 10,216 to 21,216:
[root@centos ~]# yum repolist Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: centos.mbni.med.umich.edu * epel: ftp.osuosl.org * extras: mirror.tzulo.com * updates: mirror.sesp.northwestern.edu repo id repo name status base/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Base 9,363 epel/x86_64 Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 7 - x86_64 11,042 extras/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Extras 435 updates/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Updates 418 repolist: 21,258 [root@centos ~]# yum list | egrep 'chrome|chromium|mp3|mpeg|mpg|vlc|lyx|skype|mplayer|libdvdcss|ntfs' chrome-remote-desktop.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromedriver.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium-libs.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium-libs-media.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel lyx.x86_64 2.1.4-7.el7 epel lyx-common.noarch 2.1.4-7.el7 epel lyx-fonts.noarch 2.1.4-7.el7 epel mathjax-winchrome-fonts.noarch 2.4.0-1.el7 epel ntfs-3g.x86_64 2:2016.2.22-3.el7 @epel ntfsprogs.x86_64 2:2016.2.22-3.el7 @epel ntfs-3g-devel.x86_64 2:2016.2.22-3.el7 epel xorg-x11-drv-openchrome.i686 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome.x86_64 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-devel.i686 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-devel.x86_64 0.3.3-14.el7 base
That added the Chrome browser, NTFS tools, and Lyx, but that's it. We need to add the Nux repo for the MP3, MPEG, and other multimedia support. However, even if we didn't want Chrome, NTFS, and Lyx, we still need EPEL as Nux depends on some packages in EPEL. We will follow the same process: download the Nux PGP key, check its SHA-2-256 hash, and only if good, install the Nux repo definition. Again, browse around the li.nux.ro site to find the URL for the key:
[root@centos ~]# wget http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro
--2016-03-17 01:12:52-- http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro
Resolving li.nux.ro (li.nux.ro)... 217.19.15.108
Connecting to li.nux.ro (li.nux.ro)|217.19.15.108|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3109 (3.0K) [text/plain]
Saving to: 'RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro'
100%[======================================>] 3,109 --.-K/s in 0s
2016-03-17 01:12:52 (292 MB/s) - 'RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro' saved [3109/3109]
[root@centos ~]# openssl sha256 RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro
SHA256(RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro)= a01c2956a99b71c67d79cc78c4e7acf6391e1fe12ae2f7efd1c9fbea3500a354
If you got a matching SHA-2-256 hash output, it is safe to continue.
[root@centos ~]# rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-nux.ro
Again, a browse around the repo will tell you the precise name of the latest release file:
[root@centos ~]# rpm -Uvh http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-5.el7.nux.noarch.rpm Retrieving http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-5.el7.nux.noarch.rpm Preparing... ################################# [100%] Updating / installing... 1:nux-dextop-release-0-5.el7.nux ################################# [100%]
Now we will have more packages of interest:
[root@centos ~]# yum repolist Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks nux-dextop | 2.9 kB 00:00 nux-dextop/x86_64/primary_db | 1.6 MB 00:01 Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: centos.mbni.med.umich.edu * epel: mirror.steadfast.net * extras: mirror.tzulo.com * nux-dextop: li.nux.ro * updates: centos.mirrors.tds.net repo id repo name status base/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Base 9,363 epel/x86_64 Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 7 - x86_64 11,042 extras/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Extras 435 nux-dextop/x86_64 Nux.Ro RPMs for general desktop use 2,543 updates/7/x86_64 CentOS-7 - Updates 418 repolist: 23,801 [root@centos ~]# yum list | egrep 'chrome|chromium|mp3|mpeg|mpg|vlc|lyx|mplayer|libdvdcss|ntfs' audacious-plugins-freeworld-mp3.x86_64 3.5-2.el7.nux nux-dextop chrome-remote-desktop.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromedriver.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium-libs.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium-libs-media.x86_64 55.0.2883.87-1.el7.1 epel chromium-pepper-flash.x86_64 18.0.0.233-1.el7.nux nux-dextop chromium-pepper-flash-debuginfo.x86_64 18.0.0.233-1.el7.nux nux-dextop chromium-widevinecdm-plugin.x86_64 18.0.0.233-1.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg.x86_64 2.6.8-3.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg-compat.x86_64 0.6.7-9.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg-compat-debuginfo.x86_64 0.6.7-9.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg-compat-devel.x86_64 0.6.7-9.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg-debuginfo.x86_64 2.6.8-3.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg-devel.x86_64 2.6.8-3.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpeg-libs.x86_64 2.6.8-3.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpegthumbnailer.x86_64 2.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpegthumbnailer-debuginfo.x86_64 2.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop ffmpegthumbnailer-devel.x86_64 2.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gstreamer-ffmpeg.x86_64 0.10.13-15.el7.nux nux-dextop gnome-mplayer.x86_64 1.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gnome-mplayer-common.x86_64 1.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gnome-mplayer-debuginfo.x86_64 1.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gnome-mplayer-minimal.x86_64 1.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gnome-mplayer-nautilus.x86_64 1.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gnome-mplayer-nemo.x86_64 1.0.9-1.el7.nux nux-dextop gstreamer-ffmpeg-debuginfo.x86_64 0.10.13-15.el7.nux nux-dextop lame-mp3x.x86_64 3.99.5-2.el7 nux-dextop libdvdcss.x86_64 1.2.13-1.el7.nux nux-dextop libdvdcss-debuginfo.x86_64 1.2.13-1.el7.nux nux-dextop libdvdcss-devel.x86_64 1.2.13-1.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg2.x86_64 0.5.1-10.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg2-debuginfo.x86_64 0.5.1-10.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg2-devel.x86_64 0.5.1-10.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg3.x86_64 1.8-5.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg3-debuginfo.x86_64 1.8-5.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg3-devel.x86_64 1.8-5.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpeg3-utils.x86_64 1.8-5.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpg123.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop libmpg123-devel.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop lyx.x86_64 2.1.4-7.el7 epel lyx-common.noarch 2.1.4-7.el7 epel lyx-fonts.noarch 2.1.4-7.el7 epel mathjax-winchrome-fonts.noarch 2.4.0-1.el7 epel mlt-ffmpeg.x86_64 6.2.0-3.el7.nux nux-dextop mp3gain.x86_64 1.5.2-5.el7.nux nux-dextop mp3gain-debuginfo.x86_64 1.5.2-5.el7.nux nux-dextop mpeg2dec.x86_64 0.5.1-10.el7.nux nux-dextop mpg123.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop mpg123-debuginfo.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop mpg123-plugins-extras.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop mpg123-plugins-jack.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop mpg123-plugins-pulseaudio.x86_64 1.15.1-1.el7.nux nux-dextop mplayer.x86_64 1.1-33.20150505svn.el7.nux nux-dextop mplayer-common.x86_64 1.1-33.20150505svn.el7.nux nux-dextop mplayer-debuginfo.x86_64 1.1-33.20150505svn.el7.nux nux-dextop mplayer-doc.x86_64 1.1-33.20150505svn.el7.nux nux-dextop mplayer-gui.x86_64 1.1-33.20150505svn.el7.nux nux-dextop mplayer-tools.x86_64 1.1-33.20150505svn.el7.nux nux-dextop mythffmpeg.x86_64 0.28-4.el7.nux nux-dextop ntfs-3g.x86_64 2:2016.2.22-3.el7 @epel ntfsprogs.x86_64 2:2016.2.22-3.el7 @epel ntfs-3g-devel.x86_64 2:2016.2.22-3.el7 epel skype.i586 4.3.0.37-2.R nux-dextop smplayer.x86_64 15.11.0-1.el7.nux nux-dextop smplayer-debuginfo.x86_64 15.11.0-1.el7.nux nux-dextop vlc.x86_64 1:2.2.2-6.el7.nux nux-dextop vlc-core.x86_64 1:2.2.2-6.el7.nux nux-dextop vlc-debuginfo.x86_64 1:2.2.2-6.el7.nux nux-dextop vlc-devel.x86_64 1:2.2.2-6.el7.nux nux-dextop vlc-extras.x86_64 1:2.2.2-6.el7.nux nux-dextop vlc-plugin-jack.x86_64 1:2.2.2-6.el7.nux nux-dextop xmms-mp3.x86_64 1.2.11-5.20071117cvs.el7.nux nux-dextop xmms-mp3-debuginfo.x86_64 1.2.11-5.20071117cvs.el7.nux nux-dextop xorg-x11-drv-openchrome.i686 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome.x86_64 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-devel.i686 0.3.3-14.el7 base xorg-x11-drv-openchrome-devel.x86_64 0.3.3-14.el7 base
Some vague how-to pages suggested that I needed to replace
all the installed GStreamer packages.
However, that isn't very practical due to widespread
package dependencies.
I believe that all I really need to do is add that one
gstreamer-ffmpeg.x86_64
package.
Plus, I am mainly interested in using audacious
to play audio files and streams,
ffmpeg to do video processing and conversion,
and gmplayer to test the results.
Now we're ready for the big installation! Notice that I can use wildcards if I hide them from the shell. I have broken the long command line for readability:
[root@centos ~]# yum install audacious audacious-plugin\* \ ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailer gstreamer-ffmpeg \ mp3gain mpeg2dec mpg123 mpg123-plugins\* skype \ vlc mplayer-gui libdvdcss ntfs-3g ntfsprogs Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: lug.mtu.edu * epel: mirror.steadfast.net * extras: mirror.tzulo.com * nux-dextop: mirror.li.nux.ro * updates: mirror.sesp.northwestern.edu Resolving Dependencies [... much output deleted ...] Transaction Summary ================================================================================ Install 25 Packages (+160 Dependent packages) Total download size: 117 M Installed size: 379 M Is this ok [y/d/N]: y [... much output deleted ...]
Audacious audio player streaming mid-Atlantic HF air traffic control (also here and here)
Mplayer playing "Charade". Universal published the movie with an invalid copyright notice, so the film was in the public domain in the U.S. upon its release and can be downloaded from archive.org.