Comments on: Building a Debian package for Sun Java JDK/JRE

By: thriftee

thriftee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:32:14 +0000

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

and an aptitude update, then the install worked.

thanks much.

it baffles me why they at least didn’t make those an option as part of the install, because its not something you’d just know unless you’d already had the problem or managed to find a thread like this where someone else did.

thanks again

By: - Marius -

- Marius - — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:42:29 +0000

etch has sun-java5-jre. You should be able to install it using:
aptitude install sun-java5-jre
if this is not working for you check that your apt sources have the non-free enabled (/etc/apt/sources.list), like for ex:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
If you need java6, this is not directly available on etch (it is in lenny). The easiest way for you to use that is to use the backported version. Enable in your apt sources the backports repo:
deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free
and then just run:
aptitude update aptitude install sun-java6-jre
hth, – Marius -

By: thriftee

thriftee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:34:47 +0000

Marius, it was nice of you to reply. I’m running the newest version of etch. LOL, or trying to. I don’t see the JRE anywhere in the package manager, nor do I see any option to include things that are not as free as people would like. Is it something I’m supposed to know? Do you know how to get it to install? Could you do me a favor and point me to where I can find out how to find out what else is out there that I can’t see available?

Oh well, at least debian was able to install and run on my machine. I must be on the bleeding edge of technology.

By: thriftee

thriftee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:27:40 +0000

and the reason I typed that is because if you look at the synaptic package manager, and search all for “sun” you don’t find the jre. And if you try to download the jre from sun, no matter what version you download, it gets a corrupted download file error if you follow the instructions to execute it.

By: - Marius -

- Marius - — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:20:47 +0000

@thriftee: this is an old post (2006) but even so if you run debian sarge it is still useful and correct. If you run a newer debian version like etch/lenny you no longer need this as it is already included in standard debian repos, after the change of the sun license for java.

By: thriftee

thriftee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:15:40 +0000

how sad that in the linux world you need to spend hours just trying to get the jre running because people are so stubborn as to not include it in the first place, or make it impossible to find/install with options you can’t find in unnamed programs people assume you knew where they were and how to work.

end result is that a 5 min “install jre” task takes hours googling down infinite numbers of dead ends like this

and the only alternative is to submit to microslut and their windoze or become a total sheep on a mac

By: Marian

Marian — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:12:05 +0000

This post is still useful, since debian packages for x64 architectures are not avail as time of this writing.

PS: If you are looking for less recent JDKs ask Google for “Java Archive” since Sun is promoting Java6 right now.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:48:31 +0000

Thank you Marius.
A very useful post indeed. Perfectly done.

By: jon

jon — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 15:26:46 +0000

This was very useful. Thanks.

By: - Marius -

- Marius - — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:32:40 +0000

Alberto,

Thanks for your comment. From what I know the packages that you are referring are only available in SID (unstable) and not in testing. Of course you have to enable the “non-free” repository if you want to get them from Debian sources (but again from what I can tell they are not in etch yet).

Regarding update-java-alternatives the packages created as show above will use this mechanism and fully update the local system accordingly.

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/sun-java5/sun-java5_1.5.0-07-1/changelog