arduino fails to start with UnsatisfiedLinkError

[David Given]

Binary package hint: arduino

After installing arduino with 'aptitude install arduino', it fails to start:

dg@hilfy:~/shared/workspace/MyMidpssh$ arduino
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no rxtxSerial in java.library.path thrown while loading gnu.io.RXTXCommDriver
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no rxtxSerial in java.library.path
 at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1734)
 at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:823)
 at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1028)
 at gnu.io.CommPortIdentifier.<clinit>(CommPortIdentifier.java:123)
 at processing.app.Editor.populateSerialMenu(Editor.java:965)
 at processing.app.Editor.buildToolsMenu(Editor.java:717)
 at processing.app.Editor.buildMenuBar(Editor.java:502)
 at processing.app.Editor.<init>(Editor.java:194)
 at processing.app.Base.handleOpen(Base.java:709)
 at processing.app.Base.handleOpen(Base.java:674)
 at processing.app.Base.handleNew(Base.java:571)
 at processing.app.Base.<init>(Base.java:311)
 at processing.app.Base.main(Base.java:200)

After this it hangs until I ^C it.

Sometimes it prompts me for the sketch directory first, but after selecting a directory it hangs with the above stack trace.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: arduino 0018+dfsg-4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.41-generic 2.6.35.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Dec 11 23:24:29 2010
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: arduino

[Scott Howard (showard314)]

Thanks for the report. This is a known bug in sun-java that cannot be fixed because sun does not give us permission to edit their package to fix it.

1) don't use sun-java but use default-jre instead. This bug is actually a known bug in sun-java. (bug #325506)
2) add export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/jni to your .bashrc, the .deskop file (in /usr/share/desktop), or on the command line before starting arduino
3) add the new package (instructions are below):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:showard314/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install arduino

This is a duplicate of bug #664309, which is a duplicate of bug #325506