Installing Chrome Java Plugin

Question

I've been trying to install the Java plugin for Chrome for a couple hours now, and I figured it was time to ask people with more experience. I can't seem to get it working. My current Java version is the 64-bit OpenJDK 1.6.0_24. I tried installing the IcedTea plugin to no avail. I have Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit installed at the moment.

When I tried testing if java was enabled in Chrome, any website with a Java applet would not load (when I disabled the plugin, they loaded, but not the applet).

I followed the instructions from here: http://technonstop.com/install-java-plugin-ubuntu-linux

which said to create this script and run it:

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0
MOZILLA_HOME=~/.mozilla
mkdir $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins
ln -s $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins

Note: You may need to change the value of JAVA_HOME so that it correctly points to your installation of the JDK. 64-bit users will need to change the final line to:

ln -s $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins

but this did not work as well.

I just test it in Firefox and it's working. Still nothing for Chrome

Answer 1

Alternate install Java for Chrome, can also install icedtea:

 sudo apt-get install icedtea-7-plugin

Then link icedtea in to chromium plugin folder thusly

cd /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins

and link

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/lib/amd64/IcedTeaPlugin.so 

Answer 2

Java plug-in is not working anymore on Chrome (versions 45+). From here:

NPAPI support by Chrome

The Java plug-in for web browsers relies on the cross platform plugin architecture NPAPI, which has long been, and currently is, supported by all major web browsers. Google announced in September 2013 plans to remove NPAPI support from Chrome by "the end of 2014", thus effectively dropping support for Silverlight, Java, Facebook Video and other similar NPAPI based plugins. Recently, Google has revised their plans and now state that they plan to completely remove NPAPI by late 2015. As it is unclear if these dates will be further extended or not, we strongly recommend Java users consider alternatives to Chrome as soon as possible. Instead, we recommend Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari as longer-term options.

Answer 3

Many answers are now dated. They did not work for my 14.04 Ubuntu install. For my instance of chrome is installed in /opt/google/chrome. So the plugin folder would have to be created in there.

Updated instructions can be found at https://www.java.com/en/download/help/enable_browser_ubuntu.xml

1. Create a directory called plugins if you do not have it. Type: mkdir -p /opt/google/chrome/plugins

2. Go to Google chrome plugins directory before you make the symbolic link. Type: cd /opt/google/chrome/plugins

3. Create a symbolic link. Type: ln -s /usr/local/java/jre1.7.0/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

4. Restart your browser and test Java

Update for Chrome 34+ users

Please see java plugin in Chromium. Basiclly IcedTea plugin no longer works with Chome ever since Google disabled the NPAPI interface by default.

Ultimately my solution will be to switch back to firefox.

Answer 4

I have recently hit by the same bug. If you look in your ~/.xsession-errors file, you possibly see:

/build/buildd/icedtea-web-1.2/build/../plugin/icedteanp/IcedTeaNPPlugin.cc:2072: thread 0x7f08d1365470: Error: Invalid plugin function table.

The bug report is Plugin fails to load in Chrome. A proposed update was released for the icedtea-6-plugin package and confirmed to work. This should land in a few days for all users.

Meanwhile, you can use a different browser as others suggested, Firefox works here.

Answer 5

The best solution I found, (none of these suggestions worked for me), is as followings: First install Icedtead pluging by:

• 1) sudo apt-get install icedtea-7-plugin

Then in your chrome browser go to:

• 2) chrome-> Settings-> Show Advanced Settings-> Privacy then click on Content Settings -> Plug-ins then click on Disable Individual Plug-in
• 3) Disable both "IceTea-Web Plugin" and "Java(TM)"
• 4) Restart the browser.
• 5) chrome-> Settings-> Show Advanced Settings-> Privacy then click on Content Settings -> Plug-ins then click on Disable Individual Plug-in
• 6) Enable only "IceTea-Web Plugin"
• 7) Enjoy !

Answer 6

I've been having the same problem. After digging around for a while, I found that Chrome is a 32 bit application that does not have support for 64 bit Java. (A related issue is explained by Oracle here.)

This means you would have to install a 32 bit version of Java (basically Java 6) on your system. I personally have given up on the venture, but this older question might be of some help.

Answer 7

In my case, Chromium was not starting the app, no messages, just a grey box appearing where the app would be, so it was doing something, but not enough. Which sounds similar to OP. Non-browser java apps had previously been running ok on my system.

An article somewhere suggested using which javac to determine installed status. This generated no terminal output. So I tried just calling javac, and got the list of installer packages for java. So I think I had some sort of limited install, no idea what or why.

Executed sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk and then re-enabled the icedtea Chromium plugin (via Settings | Advanced Settings | Privacy | Content settings | Disable individual plugins) which I had disabled earlier while trying other things. There were no other Java plugins in the list.

Ta-dah! Java apps now working in Chrome. I can't remember how or whence I installed Java previously, but it was likely a 'least resistance' approach, so I suspect some others may also have the same system state.