[CentOS] CentOS, Firefox, and Java Plugin

Thu Sep 23 03:37:55 UTC 2010
Barry Brimer <lists at brimer.org>

> 	The latest updates to CentOS 5.5 seem to have broken the Java 
> plugin, and have defeated any and all attempts to get it working again. 
> I'm running CentOS 5.5 (32-bit) and Firefox 3.6.9 (installed from the 
> CentOS repository); I've tried BOTH the openJDK plugin available through 
> the Argeo repositories, and installing Java 1.6.0 directly from 
> Sun/Oracle and creating the plugin soft link in 
> /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins.  Neither works at all. This was working a 
> while ago, but it broke and I didn't notice.

Starting in Firefox 3.6.7 (I think) the (Sun) Java plugin changed names. 
Here is what it should look like ...

$ ls -la /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libnpjp2.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 37 Jun 24 19:32 
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libnpjp2.so -> /usr/java/latest/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

The plugin name changed .. the old one plugin is still in the jdk, but 
will silently fail in the browser.

Hope this helps.

Barry