NetBeans won't start on OS X

Thanks for the tip about the command line. Saved my bacon. I would still like to get at the root cause. Can anyone suggest a better forum? Apple? Sun?

Actually, I also have the same problem with OpenOffice, so I am suspicious of java. I read on another forum someone with a slightly different but related problem suggested updating java to 1.6.1. I haven't tried it yet.

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Java-...

not that I really understand it

It has to be said though that NB was running yesterday, so Im trying to figure out what happened in the mean time.

I get

G3:~ chris$ open /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans\ 6.1.app/
LSOpenFromURLSpec() failed with error -10810 for the file /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.1.app.

when using open. But google gives almost nothing back.

I have had this problem for sometime now and have still not got it fixed. I have tried all sort from creating new user profiles to completely removing / reinstalling Java. I always get a segfault unless I run the app from Terminal using the sudo command.

The following links maybe of some help including my original thread that I lost track of:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/6l8l78
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5p7pmj
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5nmnl9
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5w8cht

Netbeans always used to work and Eclipse (which I have been forced to switch to) and OpenOffice still work fine. I have never tried beta releases of Java and the only things myself and several other users with this problem seemed to have in common is that we were Evernote users and / or had tried trial versions of IntelliJ.

I am more than happy to discuss this in further detail if anyone wishes to get in touch.

A workaround mentioned in this discussion fixed the problem for me using JDK 1.5 and NetBeans 6.5.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.j...

I do have JDK 1.6 also, but haven't tried this workaround with that. I also haven't tried with NetBeans 6.1. In addition to the instructions below, I also kept a copy of the "java_original_binary" in a safe place so I can put back the original later, if I need to.

From the discussion:

We've got a bunch of computers here at work that have been bitten by the same problem.

It seems that Mac OS X suddenly decidedes to launch Java Web Start apps using the 64-bit interpreter, which crashes in the 32-bit environment.
So far we haven't been able to figure out why this happens or how to fix it properly.
Changing things in Java Preferences doesn't make a difference either.

Our workaround have been to strip the 64-bit version from the Java binary.
You can do this with a tool called lipo.

Open Terminal.app, become root (sudo -s) and run the following commands.
(The '#' is the shell prompt showing that we're running as root)
# cp -p /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/bin/java /tmp/java_original_binary
# lipo /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/bin/java -remove x86_64 -output /tmp/java
# cat /tmp/java > /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/bin/java

I had similar problems with my NetBeans and java installations.

Kasper's reply to this posting from a blog at Sun (YakShaving :-) http://blogs.sun.com/yakshaving/entry/netbeans_will_not_start_on helped me out and NetBeans works fine without stripping out the 64 bit version from the Java binary. I'll reproduce the gist of it here anyway:

It appears that some Rogue Amoeba software messes things up. You can look for the following plist and directory:

• 
  /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rogueamoeba.hermes.plist
  
• 
  /usr/local/hermes
  

Running "sudo /usr/local/hermes/bin/hermesctl unload" in the Terminal should allow you to test if NetBeans will start (although I didn't do this - I just removed the plist and directory listed above). Finally if it looks like this is the cause of the problem for you then run the following commands (with sudo if you're not already running commands as root) in Terminal to remove the offending material:

rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rogueamoeba.hermes.plist
rm -rf /usr/local/hermes
Hope this helps some people with fixing this frustrating issue.