Comment 1 for bug 257704

The applicationw work out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 32 bits; the above problem is specific to running SAPgui on Ubuntu 64 bits (and probably other 64 bits Linux distribution).

The problem is due to the fact that the above SAPgui is not a true Java application; it is an hybrid Java/C++ application, where the 32 bits binary shared object are linked from the Java application core using JNI. Predictably, this fail when using a 64 bits JRE.

The solution is fairly simple if somewhat unobvious:

1. Install a 32 bits JRE (ie, the ia32-sun-java6-jre package):

    sudo apt-get install ia32-sun-java6-jre

2. Export an environment variable called PLATIN_JAVA, which the SAPgui look at to determine the java executable to use, pointing at the actual java executable from the 32 bits JRE. For example, if you installed the ia32-sun-java6-jre package as suggested above, you could add a line such as the following to /etc/environment:

    PLATIN_JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun-1.6.0.06/jre/bin/java

(Caveat: if the path to the 32 bits java executable ever change, the above will need to be updated)

Finally, if someone happen to be in contact with SAP support or the developer team responsible for SAPgui, it might be good to ask them to add this problem to their list of known issue (the documentation installed along with the application do list the requirement for a 32 bits JRE, bit make no mention of the potential problem on 64 bits Linux distribution). Unfortunately, the documentation bundled with the SAPgui above contain no contact information.