"I open XMMS and open the preferences(ctrl-p) and find that cdread is not listed in the plugins directory." you might try to type locate libcdread, on my computer there is libcdread.la and libcdread.so in /usr/lib/xmms/Input/ if they are somewhere else you could try to move them to that folder mv /wherever_they_are/libcdread.* /usr/lib/xmms/Input/