The "one real way" to install Sun Java on Debian is called mpkg-j2se (installable from unstable/sid). You download the *.bin files from Sun and make *.deb packages from them using the mpkg-j2se command. During this transition you have to agree to the Sun license. Put the resulting *.debs in your FAI package repository and just install - no need to agree to license again. Also, you get a current(!) Java, not the old blackdown stuff. Cool, yeah?
One minor problem: mpkg-jj2se does not yet handle the alternatives (bug #263729). You have to do this "manually" in your FAI recipes.
Thankyou for this tip, and to everyone else who helped.
Just a bit of a summary:
Michael Tautschnig was also nice enough to send me some debs he made, which are working great. I'll definately look into this though for keeping my packages up to date :)
Will Lowe also suggested one method which worked without a problem before discovering the debs, which was simply extract the .bin's from sun, tar it up and get the FAI script to extract it upon install.
Thanks again all,
Nicolas.
