Java won't run on Redhat Enterprise Version 3 update 3

[*]

Hi all,
I work quite regularly with Java on Linux, and have just installed Redhat
Enterprise 3 on a Compaq DL360. It installs fine, then I install the j2sdk
1.4.2_07 rpm, which also seems to have no problems. The thing is, if I try
to run java (/usr/java/j2sdk-1.4.2_07/bin/java) nothing happens! The shell
locks up, and Control C won't interrupt it. Reinstalled redhat and j2sdk
again, exactly the same thing! I've done this a million time before on
Redhat 9.0 and 8.0. Has anyone else seen this?

C

 

[RC]

Hi all,
I work quite regularly with Java on Linux, and have just installed Redhat
Enterprise 3 on a Compaq DL360. It installs fine, then I install the j2sdk
1.4.2_07 rpm, which also seems to have no problems. The thing is, if I try
to run java (/usr/java/j2sdk-1.4.2_07/bin/java) nothing happens! The shell
locks up, and Control C won't interrupt it. Reinstalled redhat and j2sdk
again, exactly the same thing! I've done this a million time before on
Redhat 9.0 and 8.0. Has anyone else seen this?

Type

find / java -name -print

see how many versions of java have been installed.

Our rhel-3 has two versions of java in

/usr/bin/java/ --- preinstalled by rhel-3, not work at all!
and
/opt/java/ --- installed by ourselves, works fine!

 

[RC]

RC wrote:

Type

find / java -name -print

Correction

find / -name java -print

 

[Nigel Wade]

Hi all,
I work quite regularly with Java on Linux, and have just installed Redhat
Enterprise 3 on a Compaq DL360. It installs fine, then I install the j2sdk
1.4.2_07 rpm, which also seems to have no problems. The thing is, if I try
to run java (/usr/java/j2sdk-1.4.2_07/bin/java) nothing happens! The shell
locks up, and Control C won't interrupt it. Reinstalled redhat and j2sdk
again, exactly the same thing! I've done this a million time before on
Redhat 9.0 and 8.0. Has anyone else seen this?

C

You might be running foul of the dreaded FUTEX c^hlock-up. Try strace'ing
the java command. If it hangs in a futex_wait then that's the cause. You
can probably work around it by setting the environment variable
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 before running Java.

Fedora Core 1 suffered from the same problem, it's a RedHat kernel thing. In
FC1 we managed to track the culprit down to the low latency patch, or at
least by building a kernel without this patch the futex_lock problem didn't
appear. I'm not sure if more recent Fedora releases have fixed this
problem, but I'm not aware of it being an issue currently.

RedHat have just released RHEL 4. If you have a full support agreement you
might try upgrading to this. It would certainly be interesting to know if
RedHat have fixed this problem.

 

[*]

You might be running foul of the dreaded FUTEX c^hlock-up. Try strace'ing
the java command. If it hangs in a futex_wait then that's the cause. You
can probably work around it by setting the environment variable
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 before running Java.

Fedora Core 1 suffered from the same problem, it's a RedHat kernel thing. In
FC1 we managed to track the culprit down to the low latency patch, or at
least by building a kernel without this patch the futex_lock problem didn't
appear. I'm not sure if more recent Fedora releases have fixed this
problem, but I'm not aware of it being an issue currently.

RedHat have just released RHEL 4. If you have a full support agreement you
might try upgrading to this. It would certainly be interesting to know if
RedHat have fixed this problem.

--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : (e-mail address removed)
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

LD_ASSUME_KERNEL didn't work, but i set the kernel parameter noexec=off in
grub.conf, and now its fine!

thanks,

c