[newbie] Quake2 - recursive shutdown

[404 Error]

I just got the Quake2 RPM from rpmfind.org and installed it, but couldn' t 
figure out what to do to start it. I finally managed to "start" it from the 
console, I think by typing ".\quake2", but then it immediately quit with 
this message:

couldn't exec default.cfg
couldn't exec config.cfg
loading ref_softx.so
recursive shutdown
couldn't load pics/colormap.pcx

It didn't complain about any missing dependencies when I put it in.
Any ideas? Thanks!