Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Install Java on System Z Linux S390 Suse 10

Installing Java on System Z Linux is easy if you know which file to download.

More information about my machine:
# cat /etc/*release*
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (s390x)
VERSION = 10
PATCHLEVEL = 4
LSB_VERSION="core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-noarch:core-2.0-s390x:core-3.0-s390x"
If you look at the Oracle Website to download Java for S390 system, you won't find anything.
After a quick search on Google, I could find this IBM website with all the files. But:
Before you can download, you will need an IBM Registration ID

I guess if you are using System Z, then you have an account.
Cool, so I download Java 7: 64-bit System z
And select the following file:
tgz package (InstallAnywhere)
ibm-java-sdk-7.1-1.1-s390x-archive.bin  (123 MB)

Then on the machine:
# chmod +x ibm-java-sdk-7.1-1.1-s390x-archive.bin
# ./ibm-java-sdk-7.1-1.1-s390x-archive.bin

Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

Launching installer...

Floating point exception

Ouch... it failed. I tried with the 32-bit version, but same result. And same result with the other file:
Installable package (InstallAnywhere)
ibm-java-s390x-sdk-7.1-1.1.bin (123 MB)

Ok, so let's try with Java 6: 32-bit System z
And select the following file:
tgz package (InstallAnywhere)
ibm-java-sdk-6.0-16.1-linux-s390.bin  (85 MB)

Then on the machine:
# chmod +x ibm-java-sdk-6.0-16.1-linux-s390.bin
# ./ibm-java-sdk-6.0-16.1-linux-s390.bin 

Choose Locale... 
Press  many times to skip the license agreement
DO YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT? (Y/N): Y


Choose install folder:
 /opt/java/ibm-java-s390-60
 
Valid and wait for the installation to finish.
 
Installation Complete
---------------------

Congratulations. IBM 31-bit Linux SDK for Java v6 has been successfully
installed to:

  /opt/java/ibm-java-s390-60
Nice !
Now you can add Java to the path:
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/java/ibm-java-s390-60
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

And finally:
java -version
java version "1.6.0"

Of course you can follow the same steps with Java 6 64-bit.
I'm wondering why Java 7 is not compatible. Maybe I'm missing a package? Maybe SUSE 10 is "old"?

2 comments:

Sergio Carabetta said...

I've been struggling with this, it took me a big while to find which file to download (JDK for z/OS, z/VM, Linux for z?). Thanks for the guide, I'm up and running now!

Anonymous said...


Thanks, this is generally helpful.
Still, I followed step-by-step your method in this Java training
Java course