System Preferences

After installing the Sun JDK (Version 1.4.x) in Redhat Linux,you may receive the warning "WARNING: Could not create system preferences directory. System preferences are unusable."

To fix this, log on as root, and run any Java program from the command line. (I'm not sure, the program might have to access system preferences.) The SDK will indicate that it has created the directory and the permissions are set to work for any user.

Once the directory has been created, programs will work properly as a non-root user (and most programs should not be run as root).

There are system preferences and user preferences. Only root is allowed to change the system preferences, but anyone can read them.