I think I finally figured out what's going on. I'm using the IBM JDK 1.4.2, and in addition to "java.library.path", it uses "sun.boot.library.path". Which was set to $JAVA_HOME/bin, which was causing the earlier errors. I set that option to /usr/lib/jni, and it works! Thanks everyone for your help; I'm glad I joined the list! :-)