Introduction
A lot of Poker sites allow Linux users to play online using a Java based web applet. This guide will show you how to install the required Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and configure it to work with Mozilla Firefox.
Prerequisites
This guide assumes you already have an up to date version of Firefox installed, if you do not you can download Firefox from here.
Download the JRE
The SUN.com website makes it hard to give a direct link to the download, so here is how to get to the correct file:
- Go to this page (link opens in new window)
- Look for the “Download J2SE JRE” link and click it, (you do NOT need the SDK, don’t confuse the two)
- On the download page, you need to scroll down a bit and accept the licence agreement, then look for the downloads under the Linux Platform – Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition 1.4.2_10 heading. If your Linux Distribution supports RPM files (eg, Redhat, SuSE) then choose the RPM self-extracting file, if your system does not support RPM package management, or if you are unsure, then go for the plain self-extracting file instead.
- When the download start, choose to ’save the file to disk’, downloaded files typically get downloaded into your home folder.
Install the JRE Software – NON RPM Option
This part of the tutoral only applies of you did NOT download the RPM file. If you went the RPM route then jump down to the next section.
After downloading, open up a shell, and chmod 755 the downloaded file. (this makes it executable so that you can run it).
jason@debian:~$ ls -al j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 jason jason 14417572 Jan 12 21:21 j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.bin jason@debian:~$ chmod 755 j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.bin jason@debian:~$
Then, run the file:
jason@debian:~$ ./j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.bin
You will be asked to agree to the terms and conditions, type yes to continue, then it will create a new folder and extract all of the JRE files into it. Become root, then move this folder to /usr/local. We then create a shorthand symlink for easy reference.
jason@debian:~$ ls -al | grep j2re -rwxr-xr-x 1 jason jason 14417572 Jan 12 21:21 j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.bin drwxrwxr-x 8 jason jason 4096 Jan 12 21:32 j2re1.4.2_10 jason@debian:~$ su Password: debian:/home/jason# mv j2re1.4.2_10 /usr/local debian:/home/jason# ln -s /usr/local/j2re1.4.2_10 /usr/local/j2re debian:/home/jason# ls -al /usr/local | grep j2re lrwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 23 Jan 12 21:50 j2re -> /usr/local/j2re1.4.2_10 drwxrwxr-x 8 jason jason 4096 Jan 12 21:32 j2re1.4.2_10 debian:/home/jason#
The Java environment files are now installed, you just need to configure Firefox now – jump to the Configure Firefox for JRE support section at the end of this tutorial to learn how to do it.
Install the JRE Software – RPM Option
The RPM download is supplied in a compressed self extracting file, so before you can install from RPM you need to unpack it. Quite simple really, make the file executable, run it, agree to a licence agreement, and you will then have an RPM appear in the directory.
debian:/home/jason# chmod 755 j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586-rpm.bin debian:/home/jason# ./j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586-rpm.bin debian:/home/jason# ls -al j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14114823 Oct 11 00:38 j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.rpm debian:/home/jason#
Now that you have the RPM, you can use your normal method of installing RPM’s to actually install the Java stuff.
debian:/home/jason# rpm -iv j2re-1_4_2_10-linux-i586.rpm
Configure Firefox for JRE support
Now that you have installed the Java runtime files, the last step required is to configure FireFox to enable Java support, this is as simple as making a symlink from your firefox plugins directory to the the java library file.
To begin, find your Firefox plugins directory, ours is /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/ but yours may be different depending on where you installed firefox. If you are not sure whereabouts your plugins directory is, run the 2 commands to find your plugins location:
debian:/home/jason# updatedb debian:/home/jason# locate firefox | grep /plugins$ /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins debian:/home/jason#
Ok, so change to your plugins directory, then create a symlink from that directory to the Java library. If you installed Java from RPM, do this:
debian:/home/jason# cd /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins debian:/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins# ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_10/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so
If you installed the NON-RPM version of Java, do this: debian:/home/jason# cd /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins debian:/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins# ln -s /usr/local/j2re/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so Now shut down all running copies of firefox, and restart them.
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Hi,
Nice article. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks. More coming