Paolo's open research diary in the invisible city: each entry is a tactic.

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{ 2010 05 03 }

Zotero, Ubuntu 10.04, and Java: not a perfect marriage as yet

I want to share this because it gave me quite a big headache first thing this morning: I had just updated to the latest stable Ubuntu version 10.04, and Zotero did not work, or better the transmission between Open Office (now version 3.2) and Firefox (3.6) did not work. Why? well, because the Java applet necessary to run the transmission did not find a correspondent plug-in in Firefox. In fact, in the latest Ubuntu the sun-java package has been removed for the well-functioning open source icedtea plugin (which runs Java finely as far as I could see).  The proprietary Java package from Sun Microsystem, which produces OO too, has been rightly moved to ‘Other Partners’ repository.

What you need to do:

1. in Software Sources/Other Software/Add “deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner” (without inverted commas) or from the command line:  add-apt-repository “deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner”

2. if installed before, mark for complete removal: openjdk-6-jre

3. install from Application/Ubuntu Software Center: sun-java6-jre and sun-java6-plugin

4. restart as appropriate both Firefox and OO


Posted by pa_card on Monday, May 3, 2010, at 2:13 pm. Filed under Blogging the City. Tagged , , , , , , , . Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. You can post a comment or trackback from your blog.

{ 12 } Comments

  1. Brian Zbriger | 16 May, 2010 at 5:42 am | Permalink

    Thanks for the instructions! Very clear and easy to follow, but perhaps missing an important step. I also to add the sun-java6-plugin package in addition to sun-java6-jre.

    And I think step 2 might not be essential, as long as you make sure Sun’s JRE is the one selected in OpenOffice under Tools > Options > Java.

  2. pa_card | 16 May, 2010 at 10:28 pm | Permalink

    Hi Brian

    I have done the upgrade today on my laptop and OO immediately came out with a warning message: Zotero cant find a java plugin, or something similar. Also, I noticed, the repository for ‘Other Software’ was already in there. So, it was a joke to make it right. It might well be that they have corrected the issue.

    I did install also the java plugin, thanks for remind me of that. However, from my experience it would not be enough to select the ‘right’ java package in OO because what is really important is the Firefox plugin. With icedtea it did not work.

    Thanks for your comment.

  3. kmartymcfly | 19 May, 2010 at 6:12 pm | Permalink

    you are a lifesaver.. thank you.. i’ve been online for 4 hours trying to get this to work and your the only one that actually explained it for non techy people like me

  4. pa_card | 19 May, 2010 at 6:33 pm | Permalink

    Thanks very much. I am a ‘non techy’ too, so I understand the difference between a geek and a user.

  5. Michael | 3 June, 2010 at 11:45 pm | Permalink

    I wish I had seen this earlier and saved myself a lot of trouble. It worked just fine. Many thanks!

  6. Ali | 4 June, 2010 at 7:23 pm | Permalink

    :x :x

  7. dberano | 8 June, 2010 at 9:36 pm | Permalink

    Thank you so much!
    I spent more than 4 days trying to work out the problem and you explained it so easily!!
    Thanks a lot! It works and I do think that step 2 is needed.

  8. Pau | 10 June, 2010 at 10:14 am | Permalink

    Thanks for the explanation. I hava also more problems with openJDK that are solve usin SUN JRE

  9. Jon | 14 June, 2010 at 9:57 pm | Permalink

    Thankyou. Thankyou. New to all this Linux stuff and that was incredibly frustrating until I found your page..

  10. Feadurn | 24 June, 2010 at 6:58 pm | Permalink

    Thank you very much, you’ve saved my life or at least hours of work (several weeks that i’ve spend to try finding a solution).
    Thank you very much

  11. Karem | 23 July, 2010 at 8:36 pm | Permalink

    Hi, i followed your instructions but i can’t fixed my problem. i can’t drag and drop my pdf files into zotero. i’m really novice in linux and i hope you can help me. my firefox version is 3.6.6 and i’m working on ubuntu version 10.04.

  12. pa_card | 24 July, 2010 at 5:09 pm | Permalink

    Hi, what is exactly your ‘problem’? do you get any error message? I was not aware of the possibility of dropping pdf into zotero, I am more familiar with the attachment method described here:

    http://www.zotero.org/support/attaching_files

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