Java 7 & WebStart on MacOS X

I discovered recently that Java 7 has stopped working on my Mac Book Pro. Attempting to launch an application results in a window that prompts for “To open this Web Start application, you need to download the Java Runtime Environments.” Java 7 is clearly installed and functional from the command line.

Doing a little googling I came across this post on the Oracle Forums which appears to claim that there is a problem with Java 7 on Macs that have a case sensitive file system. I am running Java 7 update 10.

Running “/usr/libexec/java_home -V” from the command line I got the following:

Matching Java Virtual Machines (6):
 1.7.0_07, x86_64: "Java SE 7" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_07.jdk/Contents/Home
 1.7.0_04, x86_64: "Java SE 7" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home
 1.7.0-ea-b211, x86_64: "Java SE 7 Developer Preview" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/JDK 1.7.0 Developer Preview.jdk/Contents/Home
 1.7.0-ea-b211, i386: "Java SE 7 Developer Preview" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/JDK 1.7.0 Developer Preview.jdk/Contents/Home
 1.6.0_37-b06-434, x86_64: "Java SE 6" /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
 1.6.0_37-b06-434, i386: "Java SE 6" /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

Running the command “/usr/libexec/java_home WebStart”

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_07.jdk/Contents/Home

This output leads me to believe that it should work (don’t have a comparable machine to check it against). This will require more investigation to figure-out what the issue is (if it is a path/case issue) and how to fix it. Some machines at work were having this issue as well.

Note, a work-around for launching WebStart applications manually:

/System/Library/Java/Support/Deploy.bundle/Contents/Home/bin/javaws

I could change a link to make this work (at least from the command line) but I am holding off until I better understand the problem.