Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Installing CDAX on Linux

The text below applies for the CDAX version 5.4 (and will apply for past and future versions if the issues are not solved).

First and foremost, for the moron who developed the installer and hosted it at the site ... Thanks for nothing !!!. Go and;

a. Read the installer creator's manual before writing installers with it.
b. Learn Linux before pretending you know how to write installers for it.


For the rest of you guys here's how to clean up this mess and set up the CDAX software on your preferred Linux distro.

After downloading the .bin file and giving it execute permissions, don't even think about running it again and again. It's a bloody waste of time. Just go to step 1 below.

Before going to step 1, let's dissect what this guy has done. After running the installer and it dying out, there will be 2 log files generated in the same directory. These are named 'errors.log' and 'jinstall.log'. The most important information can be found on the latter. Going through it we can see what the 'wannabe' installer maestro has done.

First, he has turned 'off' the JVM search functionality, which means irrelevant of the fact that I already have an up-to-date JVM installed, the installer will install it's own JVM. (In case you were unfortunate enough to download that 30 MB installation using a dial-up connection, keep in mind that the bulk of that file was the JVM and not the actual CDAX software. He should have put two installers with/without the JVM included.)

Then after extracting his JVM to my hard drive, the installer tries to execute the 'java' executable inside it, without bothering to set execute permissions first. Obviously the installer goes south from that point on.

So that about sums it up for the dissection. I hope I wasn't too harsh on the guy. On second thoughts... No I don't hope so. If you are putting out a software (along with the image of your company at stake) on the line, you should spend time to find out whether the installer works on all platforms. I wonder what the story is with the Macintosh users.


Now let's see how I got this thing working in my Ubuntu Breezy.

Step 1: Run the installer with sudo (or as root, whatever fancies you ...)
Step 2: After the installation fails :) Go to the directory where the installer puts its JVM in. That would be /usr/local/bin/jvm/jre1.5
Step 3: Give the 'java' executable execute permissions, so that it can be executed by a normal user.
Step 4: Run the installer again as a normal user. Voila !!! The wizard starts and it's point and click time from there on..
Step 5: Now to get rid of this VM (if you already had one installed and this was force installed). Deleting this VM and creating a simlink to your original 'java' executable should cure that irritation.


Hope this helps ....