CentOS

I get this error

rpm -ivh http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-rele ... f.i386.rpm
Retrieving http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-rele ... f.i386.rpm
error: skipping http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-rele ... f.i386.rpm - transfer failed - Unknown or unexpected error

By the way my old user apparently exist although, my old logins don't work and a password reset fails

Rpm doesn't deal with http redirects very well (if at all). Use wget to download the file and then install it from your local disk.