Joel wrote:
> What are jar, rmiregistry, and who knows what else doing in /usr/bin ?
$ ls -l /usr/bin/rmiregistry /usr/bin/jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Feb 15 20:37 /usr/bin/jar -> /etc/alternatives/jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Feb 15 20:37 /usr/bin/rmiregistry -> /etc/alternatives/rmiregistry
They're symlinks into the Red Hat alternatives scheme.
man 8 alternatives says:
It is possible for several programs fulfilling the same or similar
functions to be installed on a single system at the same time. For
example, many systems have several text editors installed at once.
This gives choice to the users of a system, allowing each to use a
different editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program to
make a good choice of editor to invoke if the user has not specified a
particular preference.
The alternatives system aims to solve this problem. A generic name in
the filesystem is shared by all files providing interchangeable func-
tionality. The alternatives system and the system administrator
together determine which actual file is referenced by this generic
name. For example, if the text editors ed(1) and nvi(1) are both
installed on the system, the alternatives system will cause the
generic name /usr/bin/editor to refer to /usr/bin/nvi by default. The
system administrator can override this and cause it to refer to
/usr/bin/ed instead, and the alternatives system will not alter this
setting until explicitly requested to do so.
So they allow you to have a number of Java virtual machines, and easily
swap from one to another.
James.
--
James Wilkinson | "!" sez I. And "?". After a few speechless seconds
Exeter Devon UK | I come out with "%^&*". Unless I come up with
E-mail address: james | something plausible soon I'm going to run out of
@westexe.demon.co.uk | special characters. -- Ben at lspace.org
