290955 - Enable java makes firefox to load the last installed Java version during browser starup

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Java: OJI, defect)

Description

[SKM]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When the "Enable Java" option is selected, firefox will load the last installed 
Java on the system.The system has multiple java versions installed on it.  This 
causes problems when a webpage has an applet which only can work on a 
particular version of Java plugin. When such an applet is loaded the browser 
shows an error message "Java Plug-in detected JRE Collision". This is happening 
because the browser has already loaded one of java when it is started.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install jre 1.4.2.08 on the client system.
2. Create a simple applet which uses only a specific java version 1.4.2.08.
3. Make sure "Enable Java" option is checked and then lad the webpage and it 
should work correctly.
4. Now install 1.5.0.02 on the client system.
5. Try to load the applet page again and it will give the "JRE Collision" error.

Actual Results:  
The browser shows a message "Java Plug-in detected JRE Collision"

Expected Results:  
It should have run the applet with the correct version of the Java Plugin.

Comment 1

[u63580]

Not exactly the same, but is this related to bug 210071? 

Comment 2

[Kyle Yuan]

mike, any comments?

Comment 3

[Mike Lei]

(In reply to comment #2)
> mike, any comments?
the latest java is always recommended to run applet. 
what's page including applet ? can I take a look ?

As a workaround, Firefox 1.1 will use JRE version ==
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime
Environment\BrowserJavaVersion, JRE 6.0 will set that vaule automatically in
Java Control Panel. You can set that value manually to other old JRE version to
work with Firefox 1.1

Comment 4

[SKM]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > mike, any comments?
> the latest java is always recommended to run applet. 
> what's page including applet ? can I take a look ?
> 
> As a workaround, Firefox 1.1 will use JRE version ==
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime
> Environment\BrowserJavaVersion, JRE 6.0 will set that vaule automatically in
> Java Control Panel. You can set that value manually to other old JRE version to
> work with Firefox 1.1


Though it is recommended to use th latest java for running the
applet, we ran into some problem with JRE 1.5.0.x which causes the
applet not to  work correctly in some scenarios. It works fine in
1.4.2.x. We use the <OBJECT> tag  to specify the applet parameters.
And we are setting classid  param to specify the exact version of the
Java Plugin to use. Since a client system could potentially have
1.5.0.x installed we wanted to make sure that version is not used.
  Specifying the specific Java plugin version to use works correctly
in IE. But in Firefox and Netscape it does recognize it has to use a
diferent version of Java instead of the default version and gives a
"JRE collision" error.
I don't think it is a Java plugin error its an error in how mozilla is
loading the Java plugin. Here is the problem description :
When multiple Jre versions are installed on the client machine the
Mozilla always loads the default java plugin during startup when
"Enable Java" option is selected. When an applet requiring a specific
Java version is loaded, Mozilla is not able to switch the Java plugin
to use the correct version.  ( Note: This works correctly in IE).
The applet is a banking software so we don't have the liberty of
changing the registry setting on client machines.

Comment 5

[Vladimir]

I see similar problem mentioned above. However, it is the other way around.
That is, if I have 1.3 installed and I need an applet which required 1.4.
Firefox, gives a message saying that I need a plugin. I installed a java plugin
(for some reason Firefox decides to install Java 1.5 and not 1.4) but after that
my applet either failes to load at all or it loads under JRE 1.3.  That is, it
seems that FireFox gets confused then multiple JRE are installed. If I remove
1.3 and just leave 1.5 everything works fine. 




(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > (In reply to comment #2)
> > > mike, any comments?
> > the latest java is always recommended to run applet. 
> > what's page including applet ? can I take a look ?
> > 
> > As a workaround, Firefox 1.1 will use JRE version ==
> > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime
> > Environment\BrowserJavaVersion, JRE 6.0 will set that vaule automatically in
> > Java Control Panel. You can set that value manually to other old JRE version to
> > work with Firefox 1.1
> 
> 
> Though it is recommended to use th latest java for running the
> applet, we ran into some problem with JRE 1.5.0.x which causes the
> applet not to  work correctly in some scenarios. It works fine in
> 1.4.2.x. We use the <OBJECT> tag  to specify the applet parameters.
> And we are setting classid  param to specify the exact version of the
> Java Plugin to use. Since a client system could potentially have
> 1.5.0.x installed we wanted to make sure that version is not used.
>   Specifying the specific Java plugin version to use works correctly
> in IE. But in Firefox and Netscape it does recognize it has to use a
> diferent version of Java instead of the default version and gives a
> "JRE collision" error.
> I don't think it is a Java plugin error its an error in how mozilla is
> loading the Java plugin. Here is the problem description :
> When multiple Jre versions are installed on the client machine the
> Mozilla always loads the default java plugin during startup when
> "Enable Java" option is selected. When an applet requiring a specific
> Java version is loaded, Mozilla is not able to switch the Java plugin
> to use the correct version.  ( Note: This works correctly in IE).
> The applet is a banking software so we don't have the liberty of
> changing the registry setting on client machines.

Comment 6

[Pete Zha]

mass reassign to Alfred

Comment 7

[Clemens Eisserer]

sice java-1.5.0_06 this its default to load the latest installed version if java, ignoring statically versioning. This was done to enhance security (don't allow attacts by specifying vulnerable versions), wether its a good idea or not is out of scope of this discussion.

I guess this "bug" could be counted as security feature, however its not "critical".

lg Clemens

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

So, is this a feature to inifinity, or something worthy of fixing?

Comment 9

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Mass-closing bugs in the "OJI" component: OJI plugin integration was replaced with npruntime long ago, and these bugs appear to be irrelevant now. If there is in fact a real bug that remains, please file it new in the "Core" product, component "Plug-ins".