Hi! Did the latest current desktop install, and can not get mp4 files to play. Also can not seem to figure out how to install VLC. (both are easy to do on fedora or pop os) Every googled answer to my probs does not seem to work on my machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated. ///edit – it prolly don’t matter with my questions, but machine is a dell g5 gaming rig, 64mb ram, i-9 cpu and nvme m.2 ssd nvidia gpu --its all very modern. So far i have installed pop os and fedora on it without issue.
Hi,
VLC has some instructions: VLC media player for Red Hat Enterprise Linux - VideoLAN
Usually, to get better help with “probs” one should describe them with more details. Verbatim error messages, etc.
Upon trying to run the first line from the website, my console returned
Rocky Linux 8 - Media - BaseOS 0.0 B/s | 0 B 00:00
Errors during downloading metadata for repository ‘media-baseos’:
- Curl error (37): Couldn’t read a file:// file for file:///media/Rocky/BaseOS;file:///media/cdrom/BaseOS;file:///media/cdrecorder/BaseOS/repodata/repomd.xml [Couldn’t open file /media/Rocky/BaseOS;file:///media/cdrom/BaseOS;file:///media/cdrecorder/BaseOS/repodata/repomd.xml]
Error: Failed to download metadata for repo ‘media-baseos’: Cannot download repomd.xml: Cannot download repodata/repomd.xml: All mirrors were tried
from this page VLC media player for Red Hat Enterprise Linux - VideoLAN I try the first line from ALL 6, 7, and 8, and not one of them works on Rocky 8.4
Besides the VLC prob, I am still unable to find a working answer to play mp4 files, vlc or not. That is what I meant to my reference of “probs”- no MP4 and no VLC- two problems.
You have enabled repository ‘media-baseos’. It works only when install media (DVD, USB) is mounted on one of the three paths:
- /media/Rocky
- /media/cdrom
- /media/cdrecorder
You apparently don’t have. You have to tell dnf to not use media-baseos (and probably some other repos too):
sudo dnf config-manager --disable media-baseos
sudo dnf --enablerepo=* clean all
Rocky is derived from RHEL 8. Ignore all material about RHEL 6/7.
Furthermore, (a) ‘yum’ is alias for ‘dnf’ and (b) Rocky has definition for EPEL as a package. Therefore:
sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-8.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install vlc
Sorry 2 be a pain, i know its annoying 4 u. When i got to sudo dnf install epel-release it failed tho.
//////////////
sudo dnf install epel-release
Rocky Linux 8 - AppStream 4.5 MB/s | 9.1 MB 00:02
Rocky Linux 8 - BaseOS 3.6 MB/s | 7.5 MB 00:02
Rocky Linux 8 - Extras 19 kB/s | 11 kB 00:00
Rocky Linux 8 - Media - AppStream 0.0 B/s | 0 B 00:00
Errors during downloading metadata for repository ‘media-appstream’:
- Curl error (37): Couldn’t read a file:// file for file:///media/Rocky/AppStream;file:///media/cdrom/AppStream;file:///media/cdrecorder/AppStream/repodata/repomd.xml [Couldn’t open file /media/Rocky/AppStream;file:///media/cdrom/AppStream;file:///media/cdrecorder/AppStream/repodata/repomd.xml]
Error: Failed to download metadata for repo ‘media-appstream’: Cannot download repomd.xml: Cannot download repodata/repomd.xml: All mirrors were tried
I can 1) play mp4 files and 2)install VlC fine in pop os or Fedora-34, seems like that should be a common, easy task. I want to switch to rocky tho, and that is the only 2 things holding me back. Can ANYONE else play mp4 files from Rocky or install VLC on rocky? You know, two common and easy tasks that work on every other OS. I know Rocky is advanced, as centos was the boss (even in desktop) in comparison to something like linux mint that can not even properly maintain security updates. I must be missing something here tho- like in initial setup I checkmark desktop, but is there another thing that has to be checkmarked that i did not checkmark before the install? I must be missing something here…
Hi,
Did you get any errors when running these:
Thanks Tom.
No errors on them 2 lines. First line ran, 2nd line returned that it cleaned like 27 files or something.
Rocky is not exactly building a reputation for community support, ha ha 
My first question of why mp4’s do not play on rocky was not even acknowledged, and the 2nd question of how to install VlC, which is stupidly easy to do on every other OS is STILL unresolved. It seems that two commonly easy tasks should have a commonly easy answer.
Hi,
1st question wasn’t ignored, its just that the vlc is the easiest way to get mp4 playback.
Please provide the output of:
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/
Thanks Tom.
We forum users are volunteers, who help when we can on our spare time.
You don’t have problem with VLC. You can’t install anything.
In the first error message dnf said: “I can’t access repo media-baseos.”
We did solve that by telling dnf to not use media-baseos:
sudo dnf config-manager --disable media-baseos
After that you got a new, different, but similar error, where dnf says: “I can’t access repo media-appstream.”
Logical remedy to that is to tell dnf to not use media-appstream:
sudo dnf config-manager --disable media-appstream
To my understanding Rocky does not enable the media-* repositories by default. You must have done that, somehow.
1 Like
or just do: sudo dnf config-manager --disable media\* to disable all the media repos in one shot.
Hello @adelia
check this answer
it will install the required codec to run the mp4 without the need for vlc
if you still need vlc let me know and have a nice day 