How do I install the plug-in for Solaris??

Question

Where are the steps documented to use the 1.4 plug-in
with Netscape 4.x on Solaris?
I was expecting a big README when I unpacked the
product.
I thought maybe all I had to do was set
NPX_PLUGIN_PATH=/disk2/j2re1.4/plugin/sparc/ns4
but it still uses the older built-in plug-in.
This is Solaris 2.8, Netscape 4.79, Java plug-in 1.4

Answer 1

I tried to do the same thing on Linux (RedHat 7.1),
and it turned out quite tricky. The instructions at
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/jre/install-solaris.html#plugin
obviously ain't telling the whole thing!
(1)
I thought maybe all I had to do was set
NPX_PLUGIN_PATH=/disk2/j2re1.4/plugin/sparc/ns4
but it still uses the older built-in plug-in.(2)
The second thing is to tell the browser to enable Java
Plug-In. In the Netscape's "Preferences | Advanced" menu there is a checkbox "Enable Java Plugin" right
under the checkbox "Enable Java". So, try to check
that "Enable Java Plugin" checkbox.
... What? You can't check the box because it is greyed out? Ah, that's right: Netscape Navigator and Sun Java Plug-In
have somewhat different ideas about what MIME types
signify the applet's being able to handle applets.
Click on "Help|Plugins", or go to the URL
about:plugins. It should show that "Java(TM) Plug-in 1.4.0-b92" (or whatever version you have) is now
responsible for handling a whole bunch of types,
but the list of types probably does not include
"application/x-java-vm". Presumably, it is this
type that the plugin must declare to be able
to handle in order for Netscape to recognize the
plugin as a proper Java plug-in. What can you do
about it? On Usenet (
http://groups.google.com/groups?q="enable+java+plugin"&hl=en&lr=&selm=wyofzvfrc1.fsf%40leo.tools.intra&rnum=3
) people have suggested pacthing
$JAVA_HOME/jre/plugin/ns4/javaplugin140.so so that
it would declare the ability to handle that missing
type. This is how I did it:
mv ns4 ns4.orig
mkdir ns4
cd ns4
perl -p -e 's/x-java-bean;version=1.1.1::/x-java-vm::Applet Support, /g' ../ns4.orig/javaplugin140.so > javaplugin140.so
(3) This indeed made my browser understand that the
plugin is a genuine Java plugin, and I can now
check the "Use Java Plugin" checkbox. Unfortunately,
when I actually try to use it on an applet,
the plugin never gets to work.
One problem was that the plug-in could not find the
java_vm program; I took care of that somehow. Then,
java_vm could not find libjvm.so, then libjava.so.
I fixed that by setting
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/i386:$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/i386/client
(4)
After that, java_vm started complaining about something
yet different; now it "Could not find Java VM symbols".
I gave up, and called that a day.
I wish Sun posted some "real-life" installation instructions indeed.
--Vladimir