sun-java6-plugin does not create symlink in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

[nanotube]

Binary package hint: sun-java6-plugin

/usr/bin/mozilla/plugins is the 'canonical' location for where mozilla firefox/seamonkey look for plugins.

for reference:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/firefox_3.5_for_developers
states "Firefox now looks for plugins in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins on Linux, as well as the previously supported locations.", which also applies to seamonkey2.

all other plugins place a symlink there through update-alternatives. sun-java6-plugin /used/ to do this as well, but for whatever reason this was taken out of the package for karmic (and also the lucid package).

this causes some problems: seamonkey fails to detect java plugin, and problems on 64bit systems. here are the related bugs:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sun-java6/+bug/269136
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sun-java6/+bug/327088

the fix is simple:
line 6 of the postinst script should read:

browser_dirs="xulrunner-addons mozilla"

then the alternative would be installed in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, along with the xulrunner dir.

currently, the workaround is to manually create the symlink, or, more properly, to manually install an alternative there with the following command:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so mozilla-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so 50

However, this should be fixed and the postinst script should install the link in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, just like all other plugins do.

don't know if the 'policy' will allow this fix to come through as a karmic update, but this definitely should be fixed for lucid.

note also that this did /not/ use to be a problem on jaunty and earlier, where the postinst installed the alternative in a number of locations:
browser_dirs="xulrunner-addons firefox iceape iceweasel mozilla midbrowser xulrunner"

I don't know why these were taken out in karmic, but they shouldn't have been - at the very least, the 'mozilla' one shouldn't have.

[Sleepy John (john-eyre)]

Adding my endorsement to the fact that I lost Java in SeaMonkey 2.0.2 when I upgraded from 1.1.17, and it was only thanks to nanotube's above workaround that I was able to restore my Java. To avoid others running into the same problem, the above-proposed change to postinst script appears to be very necessary.

[nanotube (nanotube)]

Another note: the absence of the plugin in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins prevents seamonkey and firefox as extracted from the mozilla.com official release packages from detecting the plugin.

[Jeremy Davis (jedmeister)]

I have just encountered this bug after install Firefox 3.6 with Ubuntuzilla (PPA repo) on Ubuntu 9.10. Thanks for the workaround, symlink solved the problem.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

This is being tracked in bug 532174 now.