Jon Peatfield wrote:

> that ln is from the postinstall scriptlett, if it gets run while gcj
> isn't available it drops the bad link in . which is probably /
> during install.

Oh yes, that makes sense; thanks.

> I wonder if any scriptlet errors (during the install) get logged
> somewhere useful like anaconda.log...

/root/install.log on the relevant machine contains:

  Installing java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-devel - 1.4.2.0-40jpp.112.i386
  gcj: libgcj.spec: No such file or directory
  gcj: libgcj.spec: No such file or directory
  gcj: libgcj.spec: No such file or directory