Newton’s Lore

Sun’s open source virtualization package xVM VirtualBox is out of beta for Mac OS X and available for download. Note that it can’t currently host Mac OS X (aside from the licensing issues that only allow you to virtualize Mac OS X Server). According to ZDNet Sun sells a commercial version with USB support and an RDP server.
If you download it and can’t open the archive you may need to remove the ‘.bz2′ from the end of the filename.

Apple has released (via Software Update) “Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1″, which installs Java 1.6.0_05 (although it does not make it the default version of Java for the machine.

bash-3.2$ /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Commands/java -version
java version "1.6.0_05"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_05-b13-120)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_05-b13-52, mixed mode)


The software update is installed only on 64-bit capable Macs. To switch it to the default Java install you need to use the /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences application (which states when you select it that “Java SE 6 is only available for Java applets in 64-bit capable browsers. J2SE 5.0 will be used in 32-bit-only browsers, including Safari”)

Discussions indicate that compiled JNI libraries don’t look like they currently work, and neither do QuickTime for Java applications:
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Commands/java quicktime.QTSession
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at java.awt.EventQueue.invokeAndWait(EventQueue.java:997)
at quicktime.QTSession.(QTSession.java:92)
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /System/Library/Java/Extensions/libQTJNative.jnilib:
at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1822)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1715)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:823)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1030)
at quicktime.QTSession$1.run(QTSession.java:94)
at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:199)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:300)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:210)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:200)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:195)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:187)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:121)
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: main

This is not surprising given that QuickTime for Java is based on 32-bit Carbon libraries, and has been effectively in “maintenance mode” for a while. Unfortunately someone manages to get the JNI (or JNA?) code working it’s going to be difficult to work around the problem using QTKit.

In the meantime, QuickTime for Java still muddles along in Java 5. Eclipse Ganymede also seems to launch ok, but I haven’t done anything extensive with it.

Fans of Java 6 who want to be able to access it on Leopard (as Apple hasn’t released it or announced when it will do so) may want to check out this post (and include the tag mentioned). Note also the efforts to do an open source port of Java 6.

If you’re looking for some dtrace code snippets to hunt down rogue processes then check out http://www.dtracescripts.com/

If you’re in Sydney or Canberra in December 2007 you could book to get a look at a Sun Blackbox server farm in a shipping container. Hopefully it’ll survive our summer