Bug#266273: Idea for solving JDK 1.5.0 problem

[Jeroen van Wolffelaar]

On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 12:02:43AM +0000, Alex Owen wrote:
> The problem is that the shell script stub on the self extracting binary
> does the wrong thing!
> 
> The only way I can see to solve the problem is to patch that shell script
> stub and move all the setup it does to either the sun-j2sdk1.5debian
> package (or the postinst of the generated package).

I've looked extensively at this issue, and these are my preliminary
conclusions:

- Both the RPM and the regular self-extracting bin have the same shell
  stub in front that unconditionally tries to update mime, install gnome
  registry stuff, and write to /etc/.java if the username is root (even
  in fakeroot).
- The shell script is too complicated to automatically patch into doing
  the right thing, this can only be done if the exact shellscript is
  known in advance.
- Sun will probably release updates/patch releases during Sarge's
  lifetime, so demanding a certain .bin that was at the time of sarge's
  release available is not good
- The release managers have stated that trying to fiddle with the
  filesystem is unacceptable during mpkg-java time.

I see two possible solutions:
- My means of a sed statement kill the whole shell stub, and just
  extract the binary. Execute the unpacking of the .pack files
  ourselves.
- Ensure in mpkg-java that one is running as a regular user in fakeroot,
  so that those changes are known to have no effect.

With solution (1), probably the license statement should be displayed
manually, although the user already once click-through'ed it on sun's
website. It's not entirely sure (1) is even allowed though, legal-wise.

Solution (2) might be easiest -- simply refuse to run being real root. I
checked with the release team, and they are okay with it.

I'd really like to get java-package in Sarge really-soon-now. I hope
that an agreement on (1) or (2) (or a 3rd alternative) can quickly be
achieved. I think (2) might be the fastest and fail-safest way to get
his package fixed. Please always Cc me on replies.

It'd IMHO be only a minor bug if those mime-things and gnome registry
stuff were not performed at all, by the way. Nice to have, but in no way
essential.
 
--Jeroen

-- 
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
jeroen@wolffelaar.nl
http://jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl