[arch-general] java: cannot execute - too many levels of symbolic links

[Guillaume ALAUX]

On 9 September 2014 09:15, arnaud gaboury <arnaud.gaboury at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 2:42 AM, Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi List,
>>
>> after updating yesterday java does not work anymore for me:
>>
>> ,----
>> | [tj at arch ~]$ LC_ALL=C java --help
>> | /usr/bin/java: line 2: /usr/lib/jvm/default/bin/java: Too many levels of
>> | symbolic links
>> | /usr/bin/java: line 2: exec: /usr/lib/jvm/default/bin/java: cannot
>> | execute: Too many levels of symbolic links
>> `----
>>
>  Same issue here.
>
> $ archlinux-java fix
> seems to fix everything
>
> gabx at hortensia ➤➤ versions/1.8-pre1 % ls -al /usr/lib/jvm
> total 144K
> drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4.0K Sep  9 09:07 ./
> drwxr-xr-x 228 root root 136K Sep  8 15:50 ../
> drwxr-xr-x   6 root root 4.0K Sep 22  2013 java-7-openjdk/
> lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   14 Sep  9 09:07 default -> java-7-openjdk/
> lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   18 Sep  9 09:07 default-runtime ->
> java-7-openjdk/jre/
> lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    7 Sep  8 15:50 java-default-runtime -> default/

Hello,

Guillaume here (packager of that "piece of crap" java-common).

This issue and its fix were already reported here [0] and discussed on
the forum here [1] several days ago.

[0] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=186640
[1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/41826

FYI the whole idea was to fix this bug [2] where some application need
to know a valid JDK and a valid JRE.

[2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/41639

> For anyone who have installed the jre* packages, do a `pacman -Qo
> /usr/bin/* >/dev/null` -- most if not all items in the list will be
> symlinks created by the jre* packages at install time, without any
> package tracking them.

Yes, that is the point of script archlinux-java [3].

[3] https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/bin_archlinux-java?h=packages/java-common

@lolilolicon: thanks for you bug report but I am afraid this is the
point of this approach. More about this on the wiki [4]. My answer on
the bug report. Also, this has been publicly discussed back in May [5]
where very few people cared to give feedback.

[4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Java#Switching_between_JVM
[5] https://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/2014-May/036410.html