For an hour, I tried to install IBM JVM 1.4.1 on my Red Hat 9 server without success.  Uploading 61Meg RPM file took a while via SFTP, hopefully because I haven't tweaked the bandwidth throttling on SFTP daemon and not due to some bandwidth congestion at the server end.

The trouble started when I gave the file to RPM.  It was my first invokation of RPM.  That was fast, I said.  Output said the package was installed but nothing about where it installed to.  After stumbling around the file system and books, I found the command to get information from the package.  Apparently, the file was relocated to /opt/ directory.  That's strange, I said.

I thought maybe I am supposed to run a script there to install for real.  Nope.  I browsed the docs and read the readme file which basically said IBM JVM 1.4.1 is not compatible with Red Hat 9 due to thread library change in Red Hat 9.  Great, isn't it?  I decided to post this info here because I couldn't find it on the web.  I hope it helps someone out later.

Linux is for geeks with very high tolerance level in all things except Microsoft.

Update #1 – 2003/10/06 1:49AM PST

I don't know exactly how it happened, but both IBM and Sun's JVMs runs just fine on my Red Hat 9 server now.  Weird.  I ran Tomcat on all three JVMs (IBM 1.4.1, Sun 1.4.2, Blackdown 1.4.1) without a glitch.

BTW, Tomcat 5.0.12 has been solid so far even though it's a beta.  Cool admin consoles are nice and JSPs are snappy.  Reading through Tomcat developer list and bug database, there are no serious bugs remaining.  In fact, Tomcat team is talking about whether to release 5.0.14 now or wait until JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4 API are approved by Sun.  They are not expecting any more changes in the spec and wants more people to bang on Tomcat 5.0.

I recommend that you try it now so the poor team can have some bugs to fix.  Boy, I wish Sun had this sort of problem.