Crumbs, I thought it would be a simple job to install Oracle’s Java 7 on a Raspberry Pi but it wasn’t. I started with an installation of Raspbian “wheezy”, uninstalled all the openjdk packages and installed Oracle Java. On typing java -version, I received the error:

java: error while loading shared libraries: libjli.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

A lot of reading later and I discover the problem is caused by a conflict in the binaries used by the operating system and the Oracle java executable. The Raspberry Pi hardware comes with hardware floating point (HFP) and as a result all the binaries that come with Raspbian “wheezy” take advantage of that. The Oracle java executable, however was compiled with options that use software-based floating point (SFP). This mismatch means that although the file JDK_HOME/jre/lib/arm/jli/libjli.so exists, the operating system is unable to understand it properly and as a result continues on it’s search to find one that will work. Eventually it gets to the end of the list and reports that it couldn’t find libjli.so. So what can be done? Reinstall everything! Oracle does not yet provide a HFP build of Java. The only option is use a special version of Raspbian called Soft-float Debian “wheezy”. Then try installing Java 7 again.