The Site With the Lamp

February 26, 2008

It's a mystery why Fedora 8 doesn't ship with Sun Java by default. But then again it's presence wouldn't have solved the java plugin issue that I have been experiencing. Why? well the 64 bit version of Sun Java for linux doesn't include plugin.jar . That's what I found out after downloading JDK 1.6 update 5 from the Sun site.

Then I tried downloading the 32 bit version (funny that the download page on java.com says to use the 32 bit version to enable webstart and plugin support. So why on earth did they release a 64 bit version if such core functionality is missin in it?). Sadly even the 32 bit version does not work. Firefox simply refuses to recognise the plugin. This is even after manually creating the symbolic link to the plugin.jar file.

It was then time for a bit of Googling and I came across the Fedora FAQ page that explains how to get the plug in working. Unfortunately those instructions are really about Fedora 7 rather than 8 but I decided to give it a try anyway. But I didn't get far. The instruction

After a searching using that error message, I discovered a post in Fedora Forums that sent me onto MjmWired.net but that didn't lead to a solution either. Firefox obstinately refused to recognize the Sun Java Plug in after bother sets of instructions had been followed.

At this stage, one might be tempted to uninstall Fedora, but it would probably be easier to uninstall the 64 bit version of Firefox and replace it with the 32 bit version. And that did work.