Alternate JVM for NoVM installers

[zunkination]

Hi, I'm new to the forums and an intermediate user of IA.

I've run into a problem where our installer on AIX insists on using a 64-bit version of Java 6. This causes a crash when the installation is launched. I managed to add a 32-bit Java 5 to the PATH environment variable and upon re-launching the installer (with LAX_DEBUG=true) I could see that the novm installer was now using my 1.5.

Great. Fine.

Now I try the same thing on Windows, yet no matter what I do to the environment, it still insists on using my Java 6 in the system32 directory.

The question is - what is the proper method for specifying (or DEMANDING) that the installation script use the JVM that I want to?

Doesn't seem like PATH is a 100% solution as it doesn't want to work on Windows - nor does JAVA_HOME env seem to have any bearing.

I've been looking all over to find out if the lax.nl.current.vm value can be overridden during the launch of the installation.

Is there a 100% solution for a NOVM installer to specify the JVM to use?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[pv7721]

Hello there! Maybe this KB article may be of use to you (if bundling the correct JVM version is not an alternative to you): http://kb.acresso.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalID=Q000412

[bpukalyak]

I've run into similar problem.
I need to make installer without bundled VM and I want to "tell" installer which JVM to use on destination PC.
The reason is easy: I'm making a patch to application. Original application which is going to be patched contains already JVM. So, I don't need to extract it again - I can simply use already installed. Of course, I can bundle VM to installer. But in this case size of patch increases 2 times (from 23 Mb to 54 Mb).

Is it possible in some way with IA?
Thanks in advance

[zunkination]

Thanks for the tip pv - except that seems to only define which JVMs the NoVM installer will automatically attempt to detect on the system.

My problem is, I want to be able to override whatever method that the IA engine chooses which JVM is the "best choice".

Now certainly we are supplying a VM version of the installer (that's the simple workaround). I'm only asking this question because of problems with NoVM installers in our own test environements might be encountered by our customers, and we'd like to have a workaround ready to provide them if our NoVM installer is stubbornly picking a JVM that crashes during loading.

I guess what I'm looking for (and I know i've seen something similar in some other article a few months ago) is like this:

$> install.bin lax.nl.current.vm=/usr/bin/java5

Something that overrides the VM that the engine would otherwise automatically detect and utilize.

When providing that switch on the command-line (lax.nl...), I get this in the debug output:

This test was done on Windows, obviously:

1 Command Line Args:
0: lax.nl.current.vm=C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0.11\bin

That has no effect, it still picks my Java 6.

Thanks again.

[zunkination]

I was wrong about one assertion in my first post - that the PATH environment variable doesn't help IA find a VM. It does in fact.

On another system, I only had 1.4 installed. I got a "Windows error 2..." message about the VM. Adding my 1.5 to the PATH environment variable fixed that problem.

But it still doesn't seem to control which version the NoVM installer will automatically pick. My original question was how to force it to use a VM I require. If this cannot be done with environment or command-line switches, I'd like to hear that so I can close this issue out. Thanks.

@bpukalyak
Given that I was able to get my 1.5 to work on the PATH environment, you may be able to add your previous installers JRE path the front of the PATH env prior to launching and it should or may satisfy the IA engine.

[pv7721]

For Unices both the extractors and the launchanywheres are shell scripts (just look in your IA installation folder in the resource subfolder, and afterwards in self_extractors and launchanywheres. There you can see how the suitable VM is found and maybe you may want to alter that way (but be warned, this would affect all your installers and obviously such a modifications is not encouraged nor supported by Acresso 🙂