How to Install Amazon Corretto in Ubuntu Linux?

Question

How can we install Amazon Corretto in Ubuntu OS.

Answer 1

At Preview Ubuntu is not supported. The distribution for Ubuntu will be available at GA, which is planned for Q1 2019. See this AWS blog

Answer 2

For the most part, I was able to check out the Corretto sources and build from there after making two patches. Note that this is obviously not supported by Amazon. If you want a supported distribution, wait until it's released with the GA release. This should be obvious, but I've come to know better than to make assumptions here: Do not try this or anything like it on a production or shared system.

OTOH, if you like to experiment and break things, read on!

1. Check out the Corretto source tree.

git clone [email protected]:corretto/corretto-8.git

2. Apply patches.

I encountered two compilation errors (likely due to different compiler versions on Amazon Linux 2 vs Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS).

% patch -p1
diff --git a/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/code/dependencies.cpp b/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/code/dependencies.cpp
index c284160e..c4c8e9b4 100644
--- a/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/code/dependencies.cpp
+++ b/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/code/dependencies.cpp
@@ -525,7 +525,7 @@ void Dependencies::write_dependency_to(xmlStream* xtty,
         xtty->object("x", arg.metadata_value());
       }
     } else {
-      char xn[10]; sprintf(xn, "x%d", j);
+      char xn[12]; sprintf(xn, "x%d", j);
       if (arg.is_oop()) {
         xtty->object(xn, arg.oop_value());
       } else {
diff --git a/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/runtime/fprofiler.cpp b/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/runtime/fprofiler.cpp
index 58cb6e89..89aa0cd8 100644
--- a/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/runtime/fprofiler.cpp
+++ b/src/hotspot/src/share/vm/runtime/fprofiler.cpp
@@ -635,7 +635,7 @@ class vmNode : public ProfilerNode {
   const char *name()    const { return _name; }
   bool is_compiled()    const { return true; }

-  bool vm_match(const char* name) const { return strcmp(name, _name) == 0; }
+  bool vm_match(const char* name) const { return name == NULL ? false : strcmp(name, _name) == 0; }

   Method* method()          { return NULL; }

Then press Ctrl+D twice. You should see:

patching file src/hotspot/src/share/vm/code/dependencies.cpp
patching file src/hotspot/src/share/vm/runtime/fprofiler.cpp

3. Install dependencies.

This may be a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. In my case, I had everything I needed except for libcups2-dev and libasound2-dev.

apt install -y libcups2-dev libasound2-dev

The configure step (next) was amazingly clear about what it thought was missing.

4. Configure

Configure the source tree:

cd src
./configure

If all goes well, the last lines will say something like:

A new configuration has been successfully created in
/home/dacut/projects/corretto-8/src/build/linux-x86_64-normal-server-release
using default settings.

Configuration summary:
* Debug level:    release
* JDK variant:    normal
* JVM variants:   server
* OpenJDK target: OS: linux, CPU architecture: x86, address length: 64

Tools summary:
* Boot JDK:       openjdk version "1.8.0_181" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_181-8u181-b13-1ubuntu0.18.04.1-b13) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.181-b13, mixed mode)  (at /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64)
* Toolchain:      gcc (GNU Compiler Collection)
* C Compiler:     Version 7.3.0 (at /usr/bin/gcc)
* C++ Compiler:   Version 7.3.0 (at /usr/bin/g++)

Build performance summary:
* Cores to use:   7
* Memory limit:   15757 MB

If this was the case, go on!

If not, you'll see an error message. In my case they were quite helpful:

configure: error: Could not find cups! You might be able to fix this by running 'sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev'. 
configure exiting with result code 1

configure: error: Could not find alsa! You might be able to fix this by running 'sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev'. 
configure exiting with result code 1

Install what it advises (step 3), then try again. This may take a few iterations since you only get one message per configure run.

5. Compile

Run make. If all goes well, you'll see something like the following at the end:

## Finished jdk (build time 00:02:07)

----- Build times -------
Start 2018-11-24 13:30:24
End   2018-11-24 13:35:36
00:00:19 corba
00:02:18 hotspot
00:00:12 jaxp
00:00:16 jaxws
00:02:07 jdk
00:00:00 langtools
00:05:12 TOTAL
-------------------------
Finished building OpenJDK for target 'default'

If not... well, now you're deep into the experimentation part.

6. Install

sudo make install

You'll now have a Corretto build in /usr/local/jvm/openjdk-1.8.0-internal.

Disclaimer: Although I work for AWS, this is purely my personal experimentation and I'm speaking for myself only. These steps are neither sanctioned nor endorsed by Amazon or the Corretto team. Proceed with caution!

Answer 3

There's a bit more easy way that rely on the translation of the rpm package to deb package, but you may loose some dependency checks. The tool is called alien.

apt-get install alien -y

As of today 2018-11-27, download both the JRE and the JDK rpm from amazon. The JDK rpm depends on the JRE to be installed

> rpm -qpR java-1.8.0-amazon-corretto-devel-1.8.0_192.b12-1.amzn2.x86_64.rpm
...
java-1.8.0-amazon-corretto(x86-64) = 1:1.8.0_192.b12-1.amzn2
...

Then install both packages the debian way :

dpkg --install /java-*amd64.deb

Then link the executables (choose either the JRE or the JDK ones), the above commands expects that PATH environment variable contains /usr/local/bin :

ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-*-amazon-corretto.x86_64/bin/* /usr/local/bin/ #JDK
ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-*-amazon-corretto.x86_64/jre/bin/* /usr/local/bin/ #JRE

That should be it if you don't need anything fancy, or if the target OS has already the right dependencies already installed. But if not, e.g. the target is a container image, it'll get a bit more nasty to get it right, thanks to the way Debian do things with Java.

Also make sure the target OS have the right glibc with ldd --version.

CA Certificates

The first thing you may need is the central authority certificates - e.g. if the code has to connect to https sites -, since it is not shipped with the java release but part of the OS. Otherwise you'll likely see this exception poping up, indicating that either the cacerts file is not found, empty, or do not have the right ca-certificates.

javax.net.ssl.SSLException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unexpected error: java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException: the trustAnchors parameter must be non-empty

In the RPM and the generated deb the cacerts file is linked to /etc/pki/java/cacerts which is a somehow regular path on Centos, or on Amazon linux, this file is already there on the default centos docker image, but with Debian or Ubuntu it is not. And you'll likely have to install ca-certificates-java which will install ca-certificates dependency but among others also openjdk-8-jre-headless which is then linked via alternatives and used by default.

apt-get install ca-certificates-java -y

This will install a small java program (/etc/ca-certificates/update.d/jks-keystore) that will add each ca-certificate to a newly created JKS keystore called /etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts. Of course the shell script launching this java program only knows about the jdk that are shipped by Debian...

If you remove ca-certificates-java and prune unneeded dependencies, make sure this file /etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts is backed up so you can restore it.

Then you'll need to replace the JRE cacerts link to the new file, e.g.

ln -sf /etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-amazon-corretto.x86_64/jre/lib/security/cacerts

Working with images

If the JVM has to work with images, like generating ones with text, etc. The JVM may likely need additional libraries. I needed to install libfontconfig1 and libx11-6.

apt-get install ttf-dejavu libfontconfig1 libx11-6 -y

So it's basically a trial and error. If it is needed to have everything one can inspect the rpm dependencies. Since it's the JRE that declares the most that's likely the one of interest to see if anything is missing.

rpm -qpR java-1.8.0-amazon-corretto-1.8.0_192.b12-1.amzn2.x86_64.rpm

This lists libraries in the JRE itself (like libnio.so), but some others might be useful to check like ldconfig -p | grep libz, depending on the setup one may need to be a superuser to run ldconfig.

Answer 4

Amazon Corretto preview2 has been released and it includes packages for Debian based systems:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/corretto/latest/corretto-8-ug/downloads-list.html