Arnold’s wor(l)ds

Eclipse problems in Ubuntu

Eclipse seems to break more often than ‘Mr glass’ in Unbreakable. But simply reinstalling isn’t a strait forward task either. When uninstalling, the tool bar breaks (k, thats fixed with a restart), but more importantly eclipse won’t start again. You get a message stating that an error is logged in ~/.eclipse/configuration/1177584905255.log (filename changes).

!SESSION 2007-04-26 12:55:05.114 ———————————————–
eclipse.buildId=M20070212-1330
java.fullversion=GNU libgcj 4.1.2 (Ubuntu 4.1.2-0ubuntu5)
BootLoader constants: OS=linux, ARCH=x86, WS=gtk, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments: -os linux -ws gtk -arch x86

!ENTRY org.eclipse.update.configurator 2007-04-26 12:55:05.682
!MESSAGE /home/arnold/.eclipse/org.eclipse.sdk.ide/updates/eclipse/plugins is not a valid plugins directory.

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 2 1 2007-04-26 12:55:08.090
!MESSAGE NLS missing message: initializer_error in: org.eclipse.core.internal.runtime.messages

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 2 1 2007-04-26 12:55:08.091
!MESSAGE NLS missing message: fileInitializer_fileNotFound in: org.eclipse.core.internal.runtime.messages

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 2 1 2007-04-26 12:55:08.091
!MESSAGE NLS missing message: fileInitializer_IOError in: org.eclipse.core.internal.runtime.messages

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 2 1 2007-04-26 12:55:08.091
!MESSAGE NLS missing message: fileInitializer_missingFileName in: org.eclipse.core.internal.runtime.messages

!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 4 0 2007-04-26 12:55:08.173
!MESSAGE An error occurred while automatically activating bundle org.eclipse.ui.workbench (42).
!STACK 0
org.osgi.framework.BundleException: The activator org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchPlugin for bundle org.eclipse.ui.workbench is invalid
…

To solve this, do a complete remove (aka remove –purge) of all eclipse debian packages as well as the libswt3.2-gtk-java and libswt3.2-gtk-jni package and than install eclipse again.

If you still get errors, do a complete remove again, delete /usr/lib/eclipse, /usr/local/lib/eclipse and ~/.eclipse and install eclipse again. After that you can continue with your favorite hobby of re-installing all of the eclipse plugins.

The moral of the story: when you’ve got eclipse working DO NOT TOUCH.

Yes and another tip. To install eclipse packages for all users instead of only you, do the following:
chgrp adm /usr/lib/eclipse chmod g+rwx /usr/lib/eclipse

Have a look at the follow up article ‘Eclipse problems solved (finally)’. Eclipse has been running almost smooth ever after.

7 Responses to “Eclipse problems in Ubuntu”

on 08 Oct 2007 at 03:11 1

Alex Volkov

Thanks, I’ve been pulling my hair on this, your advice seems to work on debian etch / sid as well.

on 29 Jan 2008 at 09:41 2

Federico

Thank you very much for the tip, I had a bad day trying to reinstall Eclipse on Ubuntu Gutsy, reinstalling the 2 packages above helped in solving the issue.
Thank you again

on 16 Mar 2008 at 02:20 3

Tiago Eduardo

Thank you !!!!! And I completely agree – “when you’ve got eclipse working DO NOT TOUCH”.

on 21 Jun 2008 at 10:08 4

Kristoffer Grønnegaard

Tried it, didnt work. Ive been working with eclipse on Xp for more than a year, where most features worked enough for me to continue using it. To me its unbearably hard to get to work on Ubuntu. And despite purgin and checking for eclipse dirs later on, excess features such as the visual builder still \\

on 03 Sep 2008 at 04:50 5

Travis

Funny thing is that I used eclipse today, with no problems and updated nothing. I swear, this eclipse is the most buggy piece of software I use. It breaks for absolutely no reason most times, with a complete reinstall being the only option. Backing up your profile? Pointless, it’s just going to be part of what’s broken and it’s completely unfeasible to go through and try to figure out what’s wrong.

On top of that, Java provides such overly verbose error messaging that googling for what’s going wrong is nearly impossible. I think between the fact that Ubuntu has become incredibly buggy with the recent hardy release, and these problems I’m continually plagued with using eclipse; I honestly think the time for me to stop using this combination has come.

Either I’m missing something drastically here, or eclipse is the most difficult to keep running smoothly of any software I’ve used. I don’t know how downloading the packages directly from their site and installing can always be so completely broken beyond belief.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely dig eclipse, but these constant problems continually pop up and render those features completely unusable. Can someone please, please, please figure it out somewhere? I’ll buy you beer. Or Something.

on 02 May 2009 at 06:05 6