Getting Java to work with Mozilla 1.4 on Solaris 7 (Sparc)

From: Rich Kulawiec (rsk@gsp.org)
Date: Mon Apr 25 2005 - 10:30:22 EDT


CPU: Sparcbook 3GX. It's pretty much a 110 MHz Sparc 5.
OS: Solaris 7 (for Sparc)
Browser version: Mozilla 1.4 (the latest Mozilla or Firefox version
        I could find pre-compiled for Solaris 7)
Attempted Java environment version: 1.4.1

I suspect I'm about to show a serious lack of Java clue; but
here's what I've done.

I've installed Mozilla in /opt/mozilla and it's working beautifully --
runs a little slow because this is a 110 Mhz system with 128M of RAM,
but it does seem to work fine.

I've grabbed what I believe to be the correct and latest-available JRE
for this platform from Sun
(via http://www.java.com/en/download/help/5000010600.xml)
and dropped it into /usr/j2se. It's a self-extracting distribution,
and reported no errors while installing itself, so for the moment,
I'm going to presume it's okay.

I've then attempted to make Mozilla aware of the Java plugin in the same
way that I've made it aware on other systems (like my Solaris 9 box,
running a more recent version of Mozilla):

        cd /opt/mozilla/plugins
        ln -s /usr/j2se/jre/plugin/sparc/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so .

Subsequently invoking Mozilla yields no joy: it gets very busy
for about 10 seconds and then exits, silently. No diagnostics,
nothing in the system logs, no core dump, nothing.

Various experiments (using ns600 instead of ns610 in the path for
the symlink, etc.) similarly yield nothing useful. I have the
feeling I'm doing something fundamentally stupid, but can't quite
figure out what it is...so please, flail away with the cluesticks.

( For instance: is there a way that I can verify that the JRE I
have is actually functioning correctly, in and of itself? )

BTW: this system has _some_ patches applied. Tadpole Sparcbooks
are tricky because applying stock Sun patches to them sometimes
works and sometimes yields an unrunnable system.

---Rsk
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