Hi Bill,
it looks, your metapost installation is missing format files or there are paths not set up correctly.
Try running mpost
data.mp in thTMPDIR folder, but it will probably generate missing preload file error too.
It is really strange, normally plain formats are installed with the TeX. May be some reinstallation of metapost would help, otherwise you will have to figure out, how to generate formats on Fedora linux.
I would first try "sudo mktexlsr". This should rescan paths in your tex installation.
Then I would try "sudo fmtutil -all". This should recreate all format files again.
HTH, S.