Internet/Intranet Deployment of the Sun JRE

Internet deployment

If you would like to have your internet customers download Sun's Java Runtime Enivronment (JRE) to run your applets inside Internet Explorer, you should consider hosting the Java(tm) Technology Logos at your web site. More information is available about the logos at:

http://logos.sun.com/logosite.jsp?Category=third#java

When users click on any one of these logos, they will be prompted with a security dialog box asking if they want to install and run Java Plug-in, signed and distributed by Sun Microsystems. If they agree to install, the browser will download and launch the installer. The user will have to go through a few installer dialogs to successfully install Java Plug-in on their system. After a successfull installation, the browser will display a confirmation message, and the system tray will contain a Java icon, indicating the system is running the Sun's JRE.

Intranet deployment

You can distribute Sun's JRE to intranet users by hosting the .msi file on an internal web site and asking users to launch the installer through msiexec. The other option is to install the JRE through Active Directory. If you are using Active Directory, you may have to customize the .msi file, which is known as creating a transform.

You can obtain the .msi file for the JRE installer by installing the JRE offline Windows installer. After installation, the .msi file, jre1.5.0.msi, will be available in the directory LocalAppData\{CLSID}, where LocalAppData is the user's "Application Data" folder (typically something like C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data), and CLSID is a long string like 7148F0A6-6813-11D6-A77b-00B0D0142010, depending on the release. The following steps demonstrate how to create a transform to change the IEXPLORER property from 0 to 1. This is the equivalent of running the .msi file with the following command:

msiexec.exe /i jre.msi IEXPLORER=1

These are the steps:

  1. Make a backup copy of the original jre.msi file.
  2. Install Orca.msi. (Note: This file comes with the Microsoft Platform SDK.)
  3. Run Orca from the Start menu.
  4. Open the backup copy from File->Open... with the Orca tool.
  5. Click on the Property table.
  6. Find the IEXPLORER property and change the value to 1.
  7. Save the new .msi file.
  8. Run the executable MsiTran.exe. (It comes with the Microsoft Platform SDK.)

    MsiTran.exe -g "C:/originaljre.msi" "C:/backupjre.msi" "C:/transform.mst"

  9. Now you can apply the transform on the command line as follow:

    msiexec /i jre.msi TRANSFORMS="transform.mst"

    Or it can be applied through the modification tab in the Group Policy using Active Directory.