Problems /etc/alternatives and JDK 1.2.2 installation?

["Dr. Simon Read" <simon@email.clark.american.edu>]

Folks,

I've always had some problems with Java on my Debian machines.  I made
a fairly major upgrade recently  and it's stopped working entirely.  I
get some  mystical traceback from  the ClassLoader that's  pretty much
useless. The correct class file exists and so forth.

simon$ java edu/american/csis/examples/basic/HelloWorld
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: edu/american/csis/examples/basic/HelloWorld (wrong name: HelloWorld)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass0(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:438)
        at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:97)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:244)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$1(URLClassLoader.java:212)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:193)
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:187)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:286)
        at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:282)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:243)

In  poking around  I find  that the  /etc/alternatives files  for java
(java, javac,  java-c and java-vm)  continue to exist  (despite having
used dselect/dpkg to purge my JDK1.1 installation).

Can someone explain the intent and policy for the /etc/alternatives to
me?  I'm especially interested in what java-c and java-vm are!

Simon Read

Dept. of Comp. Sci. and Info. Sys.
Clark 120
American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016
Tel: 1 202 885 3128
Fax: 1 202 885 1479
Email: simon@american.edu
WWW: www.csis.american.edu/~simon