Problem:

• Product: Borland Enterprise Server Appserver Edition
• Product Version: 5.2
• Product Component: Console
• Platform/OS Version: Solaris

When a user has installed the BES console on a Solaris machine and on this machine has never run a Java application before. When the user try to start the console, the following error messages are repeatedly shown:

30.07.2003 10:05:30 java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences run WARNING: Could not create system preferences directory. System preferences are unusable.
30.07.2003 10:06:02 java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences checkLockFile0ErrorCode WARNING: Could not lock System prefs.Unix error code 0.
30.07.2003 10:06:02 java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences syncWorld WARNING: Couldn't flush system prefs: java.util.prefs.BackingStoreException: Couldn't get file lock.
30.07.2003 10:06:32 java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences checkLockFile0ErrorCode WARNING: Could not lock System prefs.Unix error code -161864695.
30.07.2003 10:06:32 java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences syncWorld WARNING: Couldn't flush system prefs: java.util.prefs.BackingStoreException: Couldn't get file lock.

The issue could also happened to the JBuilder product on the Solaris as well.

Resolution:

On the Solaris, the Java runtime expects to find a global system preferences file in /etc/.java. If you try to start a Java application on a machine that has never had Java run before and you are logged in as a non-root user, you will get the above error messages.

The solution is to run the application the for first time as a root user. This will create the /etc/.java directory. You can then run the application as a regular user without encountering the error messages again.