[snip]
> I know I'm probably missing something obvious.  Help?
 

You can also try Ian McDonald's personal repository of RPM files for Redhat 
http://caliban.org/files/redhat/RPMS/i386/
(you should have to pick the right ones for your platform)

Sometimes some libs are named differently across distros.
A package that was created as an RPM for Mandrake *may not*
work at all in Redhat and viceversa, due to different naming
and/or directory structure.

hope this helps,

-- 
--- vruz