So, a few days ago I put Fedora8 on my main pc.  After the install plus all of the various pieces and parts, only two things didn't work yet.  The first was the vmware modules, the second that didn't work was the java plugin for firefox.

The vmware module one was easy.  Before building the modules the vmware-any-any-patch needed to be applied.  vmware-config.pl after that and all was good.

The java plugin for FF was more of an issue.  First, I needed the real java jre/jdk from sun (java.sun.com, version 1.6.0_03 in this case).  Then you need to install a bunch of compatability libraries "yum install compat-libstdc++*".  Once that is done, you need to make sure there is a link to /usr/java/jre1.6.0_03/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins.

Well, there is a bug in the combination of the 1.6.0_03jre, xinerama, FF2.0.0.8 (current in F8 as of right now), and some of the new X11 libs.  To fix this, you need to replace a string in one of the java libs.  "sed -i 's/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g' /usr/java/jre1.6.0_03/plugin/i386/xawt/libmawt.so"  Be sure to do this for each instance of libmawt.so you find in an i386/xawt directory.  You may have multiple copies if you have multiple versions of the jre/jdk installed.  If you don't get them all then the fix doesn't work.

Now I'm to the point where the plugin will show up if "about:plugins" is viewed in FF2.0.0.8.  The last issue is that FF2.0.0.8 isn't happy with the arrangement of this plugin plus the lib hack.  So, download FF2.0.0.9 (it isn't available in yum yet) and then all will be happy.  

So, now the java plugin works with jre1.6.0_03 and FF2.0.0.9.