Running JavaFX applications on Redhat 5

Question

From my previous question, I know that JavaFX is not supported in RedHat 5.8 meaning, even when I have Java 8 (jdk1.8.0_05) installed on my Linux, a JAR file created in win7 can't be executed via java -jar helloworld.jar. Does that mean there is NO way to run JavaFX jars on this machine?

Answer 1

The problem with running JavaFX applications on RHEL5 is the version of glib that comes with that OS is not new enough. The trick, then, is to provide a newer version of that library and all of the other libraries that depend on it to the JRE. The next hurdle is that RHEL5 shared library loader won't load those libraries. You have to use a compatible loader. But the JVM has the path to the loader hard-coded in the executable! So you need a separate JVM with a custom loader path patched in. Roughly, the steps to get this working are...

1. Unpack the following packages from RHEL6:

   • glib2
   • libffi
   • glibc
   • glibc-common
   • zlib
   • gtk2
   • pango
   • cairo
   • pixman

2. Put all of the shared libraries from those packages in a directory on your RHEL5 system. Let's call it /YOUR-ALIEN-RHEL6-LIBS-PATH.

3. Unpack another copy of a JRE to, say, /YOUR-ALIEN-JVM-PATH.

4. Use patchelf to point the JVM executable to the new loader.

   • ./usr/bin/patchelf --set-interpreter /YOUR-ALIEN-RHEL6-LIBS-PATH/lib/amd64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /YOUR-ALIEN-JVM-PATH/jre1.8.0_25/bin/java

5. Run the application after setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/YOUR-ALIEN-RHEL6-LIBS-PATH/lib/amd64:/YOUR-ALIEN-RHEL6-LIBS-PATH/lib/amd64/jli

Although it is not pretty, I have successfully run JavaFX applications on RHEL5 using this method. Having said that, I highly recommend just upgrading your OS if it is even remotely feasible.

Answer 2

Note this builds upon the existing answer from James with more concrete detail

Obtain RPMs from a RedHat 6.x, e.g. http://vault.centos.org/6.2/os/i386/Packages. Copy into directory rpms/

cairo-1.8.8-3.1.el6.i686.rpm
glib2-2.22.5-6.el6.i686.rpm
glibc-2.12-1.47.el6.i686.rpm
glibc-common-2.12-1.47.el6.i686.rpm
gtk2-2.18.9-6.el6.centos.i686.rpm
libffi-3.0.5-3.2.el6.i686.rpm
libXcomposite-0.4.1-2.el6.i686.rpm <== not mentioned in other answer
pango-1.28.1-3.el6_0.centos.5.i686.rpm
pixman-0.18.4-1.el6_0.1.i686.rpm
zlib-1.2.3-27.el6.i686.rpm
libXdamage-1.1.2-1.el6.i686.rpm   <== not mentioned in other answer

Extract all the contents from the RPMs into separate directory. Use rpm2cpio and xzcat. xzcat can be installed from these RPMs if necessary [xz, xz-libs, xz-lzma-compat]

mkdir redhat-6u2-libs
cd redhat-6u2-libs/
ls -1 rpms/* | xargs -i{} bash -c "rpm2cpio {} | xzcat | cpio -idmv"

Obtain copy of patchelf. I built from source as couldn't find a Redhat 5 RPM. Only requires dependent RPMs [gcc, gcc-c++, glibc-devel, kernel-headers, libstdc++-devel]

wget https://nixos.org/releases/patchelf/patchelf-0.9/patchelf-0.9.tar.bz2
tar xjf patchelf-0.9.tar.bz2
cd patchelf-0.9
./configure --prefix /tmp/patchelf
make install

Use patchelf to set location of redhat 6u2 loader (aka interpreter)

/tmp/patchelf/bin/patchelf --set-interpreter ~/redhat-6u2-libs/lib/ld-linux.so.2 jdk1.8.0_40/bin/java

Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH, this needs to have both /usr/lib and /lib, otherwise you get a segfault.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/user/redhat-6u2-libs/usr/lib:/home/user/redhat-6u2-libs/lib

(Note that any other applications run after LD_LIBRARY_PATH is set other than java which has had its interpreter location corrected will segfault.)

Now run java app...

./jdk1.8.0_40/bin/java -cp  etc...

Happy days