Installing IBM JDK for newbies

Installing IBM JDK on a linux box is a trivial task or should be a trivial task. But when you get a message like

The installer cannot run on your configuration. It will now quit.

you find yourself staring at console without a clue.

When you search above not-really-helping message on your favourite search engine, you’ll see that most of the answers are just saying to run installer as root.

If that solves your issue, please don’t read after this point. We are done!

But… You already know how to install a package. You’re not a newbie linux user anymore, right?

After some more search I saw an IBM support ticket, which just says installer requires /etc/mailcap and /etc/mime.types files and either install Mailcap package or create dummy /etc/mailcap and /etc/mime.types files.

Local fix

To make install operation successful either of the following options can be applied.

• Install mailcap RPM package before attempting the JDK installation.

• Create dummy files /etc/mailcap and /etc/mime.types files manually before installing the JDK

Problem summary

The problem is caused when /etc/mailcap & /etc/mime.types file are not present in the machine where the installer is being run. These files are used to write the java web start entries during jdk installation. The installer will fail silently if these files are not present in the /etc directory of the system.