Opening .JNLP files

I run openSUSE 11.3 I run Java6 and JRE plugin is installed on my Firefox 3.6 browser. There seems to be an issue with .JNLP files . I point Firefox to the ‘javaws’ file, via Preferences/Applications as seems to be the general advise but no joy. I did read a comment that the distro install of Java6/javaws does not work and that Java6 should be installed from the Oracle(nee Sun ) site. Can anyone confirm this and if so which directory Java should be installed in.

Hello lramsay69 and welcome to the community!:slight_smile:

I have sun-java installed and it works.

Some things aren’t clear to me:
You say you have **Java6 **is that the sun version or the openJDK version?
Also what’s the error you get, or don’t you get an error?

One tip, make sure you’ve got the sun version of java installed instead of the openJDK version.
Also make sure you haven’t got both installed.

Best of luck!:wink:

lramsay69 wrote:

>
> I run openSUSE 11.3 I run Java6 and JRE plugin is installed on my
> Firefox 3.6 browser. There seems to be an issue with .JNLP files . I
> point Firefox to the ‘javaws’ file, via Preferences/Applications as
> seems to be the general advise but no joy. I did read a comment that
> the distro install of Java6/javaws does not work and that Java6 should
> be installed from the Oracle(nee Sun ) site. Can anyone confirm this and
> if so which directory Java should be installed in.
>
jnlp works with openjdk as well as with the sun/oracle java. In some cases
the programmer who made the application explicitly expects the sun/oracle
version and it will not work with openjdk.

I do not know where the advise to point firefox to javaws comes from or what
is precisly meant by that as it does not make any sense as that is
technically not the way java webstart works.
You need the java plugin installed for firefox (which usually is installed
by default) and firefox should ask you when clicking on a webstart file if
you want to open it with icedtea (if you use openjdk). You select that and
everything is fine. If not report back what exactly happens in your browser
or what error message you get.


openSUSE 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.5 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
openSUSE 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Duo T9300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.5 | Quadro FX
3600M | 4GB Ram

martin_helm wrote:

> I do not know where the advise to point firefox to javaws comes from or
> what is precisly meant by that as it does not make any sense as that is
> technically not the way java webstart works.
Sorry my fault I misread the name: javaws is of course right (somehow I read
javaw which only exists on windows), but this should be really the case by
default and nothing you have to set!


openSUSE 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.5 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
openSUSE 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Duo T9300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.5 | Quadro FX
3600M | 4GB Ram

To get a bit more detailed information, can you do the following?

Open a terminal and type

javaws http://argouml-downloads.tigris.org/jws/argouml-latest-stable.jnlp

(you may replace the url with the url of the application you are interested
in) and tell us if you can see error messages on the console.


openSUSE 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.5 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
openSUSE 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Duo T9300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.5 | Quadro FX
3600M | 4GB Ram

The problem was Firefox doesn’t associate the JNLP file with JNLP file. A simple solution is to associate it, when you click on a JNLP file link, a dialog pops up and ask if you want to open with something, you can now choose “Other” and navigate to the Java runtime or JDK bin directory and choose javaws. Now it should launch the JNLP properly.

lramsay69, In my experience with this there’s 2 steps to get this working:

  1. Telling firefox to load .jnlp files with javaws, which it looks like you’ve already done
  2. Switching to the Sun Java since some (crappy) applications refuse to work with the OpenJDK one:
sudo zypper in java-sun
sudo zypper rm java-1_6_0-openjdk-plugin java-1_6_0-openjdk
sudo zypper in java-1_6_0-sun-plugin