java hangs after installing "Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4" (1.0)

Thanks for the suggestions !

I tried changing the preferred version ordering for Java applications in JavaPreferences with no apparent improvement (I bumped to the top each of J2SE5.0 32bit, Java SE 664bit, J2SE5.0 64bit, J2SE1.4.2 32bit options).

Console doesn't show any new messages following the launch of "java -version" from the command line.

I think I found a workaround for this issue (and found some other bugs while doing it - but at least it puts this behind me).

First I discovered that it affects only the command line, the applets work fine, as reported by http://www.javatester.org/version.html.

I had been changing the preferred version of Java using "Java Preferences" and while the changes seem to take effect for applets, it didn't change the behavior of the command line java.

So I did a "which java". Then I followed the symlinks with "ls -l" all the way to the actual file.

It seems that we have several versions of Java under /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions, and the current version, as seen by the system, is dictated by /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current. Now this was pointing to the folder "A". That didn't seem right (not a recognizable version number). All I had to do was to re-link to a valid version like so:

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
sudo mv Current Current_old
sudo ln -s 1.5 Current

and now Java works ! (you could pick other versions than 1.5, I tried 1.4.2 and that works too)

So there are 2 issues open for Apple:

1. what's up with that "A" version ? - it seems to be different than all others which sound legit (e.g. the size of java executable differs) and why's that the default "current" version

2. why changing the preferred version through "Java Preferences" has no effect ? - it launches the same executable image (perhaps it should do the relinking I had to do manually as explained above)

All in all, java seems to be working now, after all these contortions.

Bad news, the fix with re-linking, while fixing the command line issues, breaks the applet functionality and the "Java Preferences" utility. Go figure !

So please DON'T DO IT ! If you already did, you can roll back with:

sudo mv Current Current_new
sudo mv Current_old Current

I'm sorry for this misguided attempt at fixing this issue.

Thanks for the info. Probably my A folder is corrupted. Below is what ls shows me. That can't be right. Almost all files there have 68736 bytes.

macbook:Commands bhapca$ pwd
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Commands
macbook:Commands bhapca$ ls -l
total 4760
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68752 26 May 00:14 appletviewer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:14 apt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:14 extcheck
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:14 idlj
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jar
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jarsigner
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 java
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 77408 26 May 00:16 java_home
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 javac
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 javadoc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 javah
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 javap
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 59952 26 May 00:16 javaws
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jconsole
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jdb
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jhat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jinfo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jmap
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jps
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jsadebugd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jstack
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jstat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 jstatd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 keytool
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68752 26 May 00:15 native2ascii
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 orbd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:15 pack200
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68752 26 May 00:15 policytool
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:16 rmic
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:16 rmid
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68752 26 May 00:16 rmiregistry
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:16 serialver
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68752 26 May 00:16 servertool
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:16 tnameserv
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 68736 26 May 00:16 unpack200

macbook:Commands bhapca$ stat -x java
File: "java"
Size: 68736 FileType: Regular File
Mode: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ wheel)
Device: 14,2 Inode: 2920912 Links: 1
Access: Mon Jun 29 23:47:11 2009
Modify: Tue May 26 00:15:07 2009
Change: Thu Jun 25 07:09:48 2009

I'm having another go at this. The following seem to yield a usable workaround:

sudo mv /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/java_old

sudo ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Commands/java /usr/bin/java

It'd be interesting to see how the next java update will agree with this.