[SOLVED] Javaws issue - tells me it's not installed

[PeterRJG]

I've had to install Oracle's Java for the benefit of university as Iced Tea won't play nice with Blackboard Collaborate. The installation went well and I updated the java using update-alternatives. I've completely removed Iced Tea as to not cause conflicts. So if I do java -version I get:

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java version "1.8.0_161"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_161-b12)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.161-b12, mixed mode)

But if I try starting any .jnlp file with javaws it tells me it's not installed but I can get it if I download the Iced Tea package. If I try doing update-alternatives for javaws it tells me there's nothing to update. Now, I can manually start .jnlp files by typing out the path where javaws lives , i.e /opt/java/64/jre1.8.0_161/bin/javaws ~/uni/play.jnlp but even if I make a symlink to javaws to somewhere that's in the $PATH and run it as ./javaws it still tells me to get Iced Tea's version and that it's not installed.

Any ideas what's going on here?

[PeterRJG]

A polite bump.

[karlchen]

Hello, PeterRJG.

Genuine Oracle Java and the IcedTea browser plugin do not go together. Genuine Oracle Java does not need it and will not co-operate with IcedTea.
Your story suggests that you may have not installed genuine Oracle Java correctly and/or committed a mistake when using update-alternatives.
Also it seems something is still pointing to the no longer present IcedTea.

Please open a terminal window. Execute the following terminal commands one at a time and post the screen output which the commands generate.

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  ls -l /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/javaws

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  ls -l /etc/alternatives/java /etc/alternatives/javaws

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  dpkg --list openjdk-8* icedtea-8*

Note:
If everything had been setup correctly, simply invoking javaws, without prefixing any path, should effectively invoke /opt/java/64/jre1.8.0_161/bin/javaws As it does not do so, something must be incorrect.

Best regards,
Karl

[PeterRJG]

Hi Karl, and thanks for your help. I followed an online guide to removing Iced Tea and installing Oracle, so Iced Tea shouldn't be present at all.

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peter@boxybox ~ $ ls -l /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/javaws
ls: cannot access '/usr/bin/javaws': No such file or directory
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Mar  5 17:42 /usr/bin/java -> /etc/alternatives/java

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peter@boxybox ~ $ ls -l /etc/alternatives/java /etc/alternatives/javaws
ls: cannot access '/etc/alternatives/javaws': No such file or directory
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Mar  5 17:42 /etc/alternatives/java -> /opt/java/64/jre1.8.0_161/bin/java

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peter@boxybox ~ $ dpkg --list openjdk-8* icedtea-8*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
un  openjdk-8-jre  <none>       <none>       (no description available)
rc  openjdk-8-jre- 8u151-b12-0u amd64        OpenJDK Java runtime, using Hotsp
dpkg-query: no packages found matching icedtea-8*

[karlchen]

Hello, PeterRJG.

The entries for the executable file java look all right. But something is missing for javaws.

Let us try to create the missing entries for javaws:

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update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javaws" "javaws" "/opt/java/64/jre1.8.0_161/bin/javaws" 1
update-alternatives --set javaws /opt/java/64/jre1.8.0_161/bin/javaws

Let us check it has been set right:

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update-alternatives --list javaws

Note:
Do not assume I were a nerd knowing those exact commandlines off-hand. I have written them down a long time ago, when I still used and installed genuine Oracle Java on my office notebook manually in regular intervals.

Hope javaws now works for you, too.

Karl

[PeterRJG]

Thank you Karl, it works like a charm now.

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peter@boxybox ~ $ update-alternatives --list javaws
/opt/java/64/jre1.8.0_161/bin/javaws

And typing javaws at the command line now gives me the program's options, not a message to install it. So this one is solved I think. Thank you again.