Java Exceptions error when trying to execute .jar on Debian Jessie

Question

A teacher of mine created a program on java around 2005, he has always used MacOS. He sent the .jar to me and a classmate, both linux (me Debian 8 and him Ubuntu) and we can't execute the program because it returns a lot of exceptions.

At first I thought it could have been because the program was too old but my teacher can run it in his 1 year old updated mac perfectly fine.

Checked and Debian comes with OpenJDK as default. Havent installed anything, is there anything I should be installing for it to run?

PS: if I double click the .jar I can see the folders.

The exceptions are:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jfree/chart/ChartPanel
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:803)
    at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:71)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:425)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2625)
    at java.lang.Class.getMethod0(Class.java:2866)
    at java.lang.Class.getMethod(Class.java:1676)
    at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.getMainMethod(LauncherHelper.java:494)
    at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:486)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.jfree.chart.ChartPanel
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:425)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)
    ... 18 more

I don't know anything about java so please if you can try to be as basic as you can. I am also new to Debian, so I really don't know if there's a package missing from the default installation.

Edit:

The MANIFEST.MF file is

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.8.2
Created-By: 1.6.0_24-b07-334-10M3326 (Apple Inc.)
Class-Path: lib/Jama-1.0.2-ed.jar lib/jfreechart-1.0.6.jar lib/ant.jar
lib/jcommon-1.0.10.jar
X-COMMENT: Main-Class will be added automatically by build
Main-Class: com.cmcweb.electronicstructure.CompleteDOSPlotter

Answer 1

You have to download JFreeChart.jar libary ( http://www.java2s.com/Code/Jar/j/Downloadjfreechartjar.htm ) because your teacher didn't include external classes in his jar file.

Put JFreeChart.jar into /your_linux_path/jre/lib/ext folder and after that it should works.

PS The same you have to do with Jama.jar and jcommon.jar

Answer 2

Make sure you have all jars with the version from the manifest file downloaded in a lib directory. Lib directory should be placed in the same directory as your jar, the names of dependency jars should be exactly the same as these from classpath in manifest.

So in your case, it may not work with the newest JFreeChart version. You need to find and download version 1.0.6