Packages depending on JRE might not have a usable JRE when configured

The problem is not a pre-depend one but rather a circular dependency in openjdk-6 (bug 291123) and sun-java6 (bug 291128). Those circular dependencies are arbitrarily broken at some point and may result in Tomcat trying to start while the JRE is not yet available...

I don't agree, the tomcat6 tries to use java in the postinst, before the -jre-headless package is configured.
jvm.cfg is a config file in openjdk-6-jre-headless, and this is only available after configuration.

The two circular dependencies in JVMs have been confirmed as WONTFIX so we need another solution.
Here are the candidates :

- Fix the apt bug that makes it break the circular dependency at a weird point
- Try making default-jre-headless depend on both openjdk-6-jre-lib and openjdk-6-jre-headless
- Use the same ugly workaround as in ca-certificates-java postinst
- Add a Pre-Depend (should be avoided)

A few details on the proposed solutions:

* Fix the apt bug that makes it break the circular dependency at a weird point
This is difficult because of the regression potential, should probably be avoided if we can fix it in the Depends themselves ?

* Try making default-jre-headless depend on both openjdk-6-jre-lib and openjdk-6-jre-headless
I tried this and it works : the dependency loop gets arbitrarily broken at that level rather than at tomcat6 level:
...
Setting up openjdk-6-jre-lib (6b12-0ubuntu6) ...
Setting up default-jre-headless (1.6-30ubuntu3.1) ...
Setting up openjdk-6-jre-headless (6b12-0ubuntu6) ...
...
Setting up tomcat6 (6.0.18-0ubuntu3) ...
The interesting thing is that this would fix any package depending on default-jre / default-jre-headless.

* Use the same ugly workaround as in ca-certificates-java postinst
The workaround is creating the missing /etc/$jvm/jvm.cfg file for the time it takes to start tomcat6:
if [ ! -f /etc/$jvm/jvm.cfg ]; then
  temp_jvm_cfg=/etc/$jvm/jvm.cfg
  mkdir -p /etc/$jvm
  printf -- "-server KNOWN\n" > $temp_jvm_cfg
fi
...
[ -z "$temp_jvm_cfg" ] || rm -f $temp_jvm_cfg

* Add a Pre-Depend
That one we already know, and want to avoid if possible.

For now, I would prefer making default-jre-headless depend on both openjdk-6-jre-lib and openjdk-6-jre-headless; that seems simple and non-invasive. Matthias?

I don't agree that we should avoid fixing bugs in apt, although we should probably work around them until they're fixed.

The ca-certificates-java workaround does not fill me with joy ...

Proposed patch.

java-common (0.30ubuntu5) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Make default-jre-headless depend on both *-jre-headless and *-jre-lib,
    except for gcj where it should just depend on java-gcj-compat-headless
    (fixes LP: #288616)

This bug was fixed in the package openjdk-6 - 6b14-0ubuntu3

---------------
openjdk-6 (6b14-0ubuntu3) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Update IcedTea build infrastructure (20081217).
  * Add support for PARISC.
  * Use a default jvm.cfg if the jvm.cfg doesn't yet exist after unpacking
    the runtime package. LP: #288616.

 -- Matthias Klose <email address hidden> Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:58:26 +0100

jsvc (from commons-daemon) still can't find a JVM: it statically looks for "jvm.cfg", then tries various well-known libjvm.so locations (but unfortunately not the "server" one). It needs to be taught about that one so that it can find it.

Hm, that will not be sufficient. Once jsvc is fixed, Tomcat finally needs the following defined in java.security to start:
  policy.expandProperties=true
  policy.allowSystemProperty=true
And java.security is also a conffile, so this is also available only after configuration. Not sure we have a workaround for that one.

So it can't be fixed by just working around it in commons-daemon. We need the JRE to be fully installed before it's put in use. Solutions left include:
1- PreDepend
2- Fix apt
3- Make default-jre-headless depend on both openjdk6-lib and openjdk6-jre-headless
Reopening tasks for apt and java-common, since I'm still unsure why (3) isn't the easiest solution.

For some reason this is no longer an issue on current karmic.
Both "apt-get install tomcat6 tomcat6-examples tomcat6-admin tomcat6-user" and "apt-get install tomcat6" work...
Will reopen if I can reproduce it.

Intrepid Ibex reached end-of-life on 30 April 2010 so I am closing the
report. The bug has been fixed in newer releases of Ubuntu.