In order to get access to a client’s VPN, I needed to get their VPN client software installed on my Fedora 10 workstation. Following their basic directions, it was apparent that there was an attempt to run Java in FireFox, and it was failing. Running FireFox from a shell, I could see IcedTea errors. So, I went off for instructions to get Sun’s Java installed.
There were some clues from the http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1356952, and few promising Google results. The Fedora Project had an FAQ on Java that was a good start. That pointed to http://www.city-fan.org/tips/JpackageJava with some fairly intricate instructions to download the Sun JDK package and invoke some serious RPM magic on it to turn it into a set of RPM packages that could be installed on Fedora. Once I followed the instructions, the ‘alternatives’ script showed me that Java was installed – hurrah! I tried the VPN install again, but no joy, same IcedTea error messages. Hmm. It turned out that the global Mozilla FireFox plugins, stored in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, had two shortcuts: libjavaplugin_oji.so and libjavaplugin.so. Running FireFox and examining about:config and searching for plugin told me that Moz should only be using the first one, but that was pointing to the correct place. The second, on the other hand, was pointing to the Iced Tea installation. FireFox’s about:plugins showed me that Iced Tea was still the preferred plugin. I deleted the second, libjavaplugin.so, link and tried it one more time. Yes! Installed. Whew!
Now to get to work…