Howto: Sun Java Web Start on Fedora 7

I recently faced the problem of using a java web start application on my machine and wasn’t sure how to do this. It is a small fix others might want to know as well.

This howto is an addition to the Sun Java on Fedora 7 howto. Therefore you can only use it when you already followed the Java howto.

The main problem is that with the howto mentioned above (and also with a standard install of Fedora’s free Java implementation) there will be no javaws binary in any $PATH directory. When you have installed Sun’s Java there is such a binary, but it is still not in any $PATH directory.

What you have to do is to link it, the best is to do this by using the alternatives system to make sure you can use several Java installations next to each other. In the following code examples make sure your directory paths are set correctly because I use mine as an example, but you might have another Java version, and the version is hard coded into the directory (which is something I will never ever understand):

alternatives --install /usr/bin/javaws javaws /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.12/jre/bin/javaws 1

In this step we register the real javaws binary from the Java rpm package with the system under the point “javaws” and in the same step link it to the right $PATH directory, here /usr/bin/javaws. Also, we have to give a priority, and of course we set the priority to 1.

That’s it. In case of Konqueror (or also Firefox) you might also want to register the mime type “application/x-java-jnlp-file” with the executable given above. In Konqueror you do so by opening Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> File Associations. Find the type “x-java-jnlp-file” under “application” (or create it, the file type must be *.jnlp) and add the application /usr/bin/javaws to the application list (which is most certainly empty). That’s it.

To test the setup I used the (impressive) Qt Jambi web demo. Sun’s Web Start demos don’t work theough since they have the opinion I haven’t installed Java Web Start yet – I have no idea why…
For Firefox go to the Qt demo, click on the link and choose to open such files with /usr/bin/javaws every time.