Exception Java 25

[vadim-cherepanov]

Hi,

I installed FastQC on a remote machine with

NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
VERSION="8.10 (Ootpa)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.10"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.10 (Ootpa)"

and it gives an error when running in GUI mode.

Exception in thread "main" java.awt.HeadlessException
	at java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.checkHeadless(GraphicsEnvironment.java:204)
	at java.awt.Window.<init>(Window.java:536)
	at java.awt.Frame.<init>(Frame.java:420)
	at java.awt.Frame.<init>(Frame.java:385)
	at javax.swing.JFrame.<init>(JFrame.java:189)
	at uk.ac.babraham.FastQC.FastQCApplication.<init>(FastQCApplication.java:63)
	at uk.ac.babraham.FastQC.FastQCApplication.main(FastQCApplication.java:338)

By default Java is

openjdk version "1.8.0_492"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_492-b09)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.492-b09, mixed mode)

When I load instead a module with

java version "21.0.2" 2024-01-16 LTS
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 21.0.2+13-LTS-58)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0.2+13-LTS-58, mixed mode, sharing)

all is good.

So, I should be good for now, but wanted to report anyway.

Thanks,
Vadim

[s-andrews]

On recent RHEL distributions they package a more minimal installation of java which doesn't include the GUI classes so that you can run headless applications but nothing with a graphical interface. This is definitely against the JRE packaging guidelines, but this is how it is.

If you have a look at the RPM for java8 you have installed I suspect you'll find that it's something like java-1.8.0--openjdk-headless
which is the minimal version. If you update it to the full JRE then that may well get things working again.

More details are in the RHEL java install docs.