Jin Chess Client can't create menu shortcut

dauphinfay · 12-15-2008, 04:58 PM

This is new to me as I have always been able to add commands that launch an application to the main menu. However, with the Jin Chess Client I have to have a custom command in order to launch it

/home/user/jin-2.14.1$ java -jar jin.jar

This works in the command line but I cannot get it to work from the custom command option in the main menu. There is no clickable option to get this application working. I have to use the cli. There has got to be something special that I am missing. Apparently, I have to be in the directory or I get an error. Here is the output I get for the mistake:

$ /home/user/jin-2.14.1/java -jar jin.jar
bash: /home/user/jin-2.14.1/java: No such file or directory

Any suggestions?

unSpawn · 12-15-2008, 05:10 PM

Try '/path/to/java -jar /home/user/jin-2.14.1/jin.jar' where "/path/to" is the output of `which java` (usually /usr/bin).

[EDIT]
BTW, I don't know where .*buntu keeps its .desktop files ("locate -r /usr/share/.*/*.desktop$" or "find /usr/share/ -type f -iname \*.desktop") but you could try dropping a file named "jinchessclient.desktop" in one of them dirs and see if it pops up next time your desktop environment rereads those dirs:

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=/usr/bin/java -jar /home/user/jin-2.14.1/jin.jar
Icon=
DocPath=
Path= 
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name=Jin Chess Client
X-KDE-StartupNotify=true
Categories=Games;

* Note this doesn't conform to any standards, I just wanted to only write the basic entries.

dauphinfay · 12-15-2008, 06:00 PM

Almost there. I followed the first suggestion and the error says that it can't find java.io. It goes on to say that it can't find the directory "/home/user/libs". It then says that I am most likely not running Jin from its directory. I'm getting close but this is odd as I checked the path "/home/user/jin-2.14.1 is correct.

Thanks for your patience unSpawn.

unSpawn · 12-16-2008, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dauphinfay

It goes on to say that it can't find the directory "/home/user/libs".

Maybe the software wasn't installed properly?

Quote:

Originally Posted by dauphinfay

It then says that I am most likely not running Jin from its directory.

Try 'cd /home/user/jin-2.14.1/ && /usr/bin/java -jar ./jin.jar' and please post exact error messages, TIA.

dauphinfay · 12-17-2008, 08:29 AM

Could not launch menu item
Failed to execute child process "cd" (no such file or directory)

That is the output. It's rubbish though as I have checked, double checked and triple checked. The directory is correct. it is /home/user/jin-2.14.1/

thanks once again.

unSpawn · 12-17-2008, 12:45 PM

Trying to prefix full paths on everything should work but the .desktop file might not like the "&&" part. To work around that create a shellscript with contents [code]
#!/bin/sh --
cd /home/user/jin-2.14.1 || exit 127
exec /usr/bin/java -jar ./jin.jar
exit 0
[code]
and save it as "/usr/local/bin/jin", then make it executable with 'chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/jin' and change the Exec= line in the .desktop file to read "Exec=/usr/local/bin/jin".

dauphinfay · 12-22-2008, 08:56 AM

I could not get the above to work. I am sure it is my fault though. With that said, I had rebooted and not for some reason I can simply add the executable (that was not working initially without the "jar" addition).

Hopefully, the above info will help the next fellow that comes around. Thanks again.