help with jhex on linux

I have a couple java VMs installed on Ubuntu
and neither of them can run jhex correctly.

If I run jhex using Oracle java, it can't save files
(a thread gets an exception and dies). If I run using
gij (GNU libgcj) the basics work but the Adjust Colors
window sliders don't appear and I am stuck with green/blue.
I tried copying a hex_prefs file from a Windows machine
where I'd saved colors I liked but starting jhex with
that in place caused gij to crash.

The JHex.jar I'm using is 301440 bytes and has md5sum
604d5c3d4048b6e461e76e92827b50b3 .

The version of gij I have installed is
java version "1.5.0"
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.6.3

and the Oracle java is
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_10-b18)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.6-b04, mixed mode)

Is there some environment variable or something that needs to
be set to get Oracle java to be happy? It's been years since
I last did much with java and I may be forgetting something.

Thanks for any tips.

> a thread gets an exception and dies

If you're running from a command line, does anything get written to standard error?

If I try to save a game tree to a file, I see on stderr:
Exception in thread "Thread-0" java.lang.NullPointerException
at sun.awt.X11.GtkFileDialogPeer.setFileInternal(GtkFileDialogPeer.java:79)
at sun.awt.X11.GtkFileDialogPeer.run(Native Method)
at sun.awt.X11.GtkFileDialogPeer.showNativeDialog(GtkFileDialogPeer.java:172)
at sun.awt.X11.GtkFileDialogPeer.access$000(GtkFileDialogPeer.java:39)
at sun.awt.X11.GtkFileDialogPeer$1.run(GtkFileDialogPeer.java:114)

The latest version of Jhex is 0.9a2 and, other than the log window, has all the features in a single window. Its md5 is 34a27ff6a5947cd2abaaede9fa585f00 You can download it from here and read some comments by the author here

I don't think it will work with the gij VM but I could be wrong.

Hmmm. That same stack dump shows at stackoverflow.com.

Hi David, I just downloaded the 0.9a2 version and
I see the same problems (no color sliders in gij,
NullPointerException on file save in Oracle java).

Are you running jhex on Linux? Which java VM?

I have a workaround for now (although I'm still
interested to hear if anyone else has found a
Linux java VM that works well with Jhex).

The problem when running under the gij VM
was that I couldn't adjust the colors.
I've been in touch with Kevin Walker, who steered
me (thanks!) to an older version of source for Jhex at
http://twixhex.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/twixhex/
and I got the colors I wanted by hacking the source.

java: write once, debug everywhere :)