This seems like an alternatives bug.  If an attempt is made to install a link
with the same name as a previously-installed link, but a different primary path,
then the entire alternatives --install invocation will fail.  A better response
would be to not install only the affected slave symlink.

What changed in Fedora 9:

javaws should not be installed as /usr/share/javaws, it should go in
/usr/lib/jvm/java-$version-$vendor/jre/bin.  We've fixed that in F9's
java-1.6.0-openjdk packages.  This fix, combined with alternatives' behaviour,
cause the conflict with these older JPackage packages.

Just to add, I tried it with the latest jdk-compat package from jpackage
(java-1.6.0-sun-compat-1.6.0.06-1jpp.i586.rpm), the behavior remains the same --
javaws conflict and no installation of the links.

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I just now encountered this bug in Fedora 11.  I was trying to install java-1.6.0-sun-compat-1.6.0.06-1jpp.i586.rpm obtained from ftp://jpackage.hmdc.harvard.edu/JPackage/1.7/generic/RPMS.non-free/.  Is there a work around?  I do not seem to have the privileges necessary to change the 'version' of this bug as recommended in the previous post.

For others who experience this bug in the interim, I found this nosrc rpm on the web: http://ryu.zarb.org/~jasonc/packages/java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.13-2jpp.nosrc.rpm

It does work with Fedora 11.  You can find instructions for installing nosrc rpms on the jpackage website: http://www.jpackage.org/nosrc.php

I found this "spec" file to require jdk-6u13-linux-x64.bin obtainable from: http://java.sun.com/products/archive/ (don't execute this jdk binary directly - rather, you put it in a special folder under a directory structure that is created by the "nosrc" rpm and then run the "rpmbuild" command which repackages the binary as a set of rpms).

The directory structure containing the "spec" file may be found somewhere under /usr/src or ~/rpm or ~/rpmbuild depending on how your system is configured.

gb

Sorry about the delays. I've looked at this some; it's not really a simple fix.

If you take the route in comment #1 (do not install that particular slave), you're likely to end up with a broken system. After all, if the app is using that path, it likely expects that path, not whatever path the other alternatives-using app uses.

Furthermore, there's no good way to determine which is 'more' correct; it really boils down to which app was installed first - if you installed the Sun JDK first, you'd get the error on installing OpenJDK.

Hence, throwing an error seems the right thing to do here.