Setting JAVA_HOME on Ubuntu

Allan Lykke Christensen — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:16:00 +0000

A thing that always annoys me about installing Java is that it doesn’t automatically set up the JAVA_HOME environment variable after installation. I guess this is to avoid having problems when you have multiple virtual machines installed. Anyway, I use Ubuntu Linux to host the majority of my Java Application Server. It is easy install Java (sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk) but there always seems to be a debate about where to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable. Some instructions say you should add it to your personal profile (e.g. ~/.bashrc) others suggest adding it to the global profile (i.e. /etc/profile), some people even suggest adding it directly in the init script for the services that need the variable. My suggest is to add an executable shell script to /etc/profile.d/ called javahome.sh. The content of the file would be: export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun. All shell scripts (i.e. executable files with the extension .sh) located in the /etc/profile.d/ directory are loaded upon login and would therefore work for all users without having to change system files that may change upon the next O/S upgrade. To test the script simply type source /etc/profile This will reload the profile for the current user. To verify that the environment variable has been initialised type export|grep JAVA_HOME

Enjoy!

Getting to know Solaris

Allan Lykke Christensen — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:43:00 +0000

The past ten years I’ve been working comfortably with various distributions of Linux (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gentoo, Mandrake, RedHat, Debian, Suse) and I have really enjoyed what they have to offer. During the four years where I was self-employed all my machines were running one or the other distribution of Linux (My favourite to this day is Ubuntu closely followed by Gentoo).

Anyways, lately I’ve become curious about Solaris and would like to use it for a Java build server that I’m setting up. The server will host a versioning system (Subversion), a continuous integration system (CruiseControl most likely) and an issue tracking system (Mantis most likely).

Last weekend I started my project to set-up Solaris. It’s been quite a struggle as I thought that I could just transfer all my Linux skills to Solaris – but little did I know at that time.

Status as of now is that I’ve

downloaded the DVD image of Solaris 10 onto my Windows workstation

Merged the two ISO files (this took me time to figure out as I’m not exactly known for reading the instructions before starting work!)

Created a Virtual Machine in the free version of VMWare 1.0.4 with 15 GB Hard disk space

Installed Solaris with the minimum required software (the first few times I installed it I didn’t select the custom installation and ended up installing both Java Desktop System and CDE – all I really wanted was just a text console).

Installed pkg-get for package management

Installed a few packages like SSH, Subversion, Apache, PHP, MySQL

One thing that has thoroughly annoyed me is package management. When you’re use to apt-get (Debian) its hard getting use to tinker around so much to get packages to compile and configure properly.

So here I am… I’ve been contemplating how to continue from here, and that is when I saw an announcement about free Solaris training in Sun Learning Centre with the added bonus of being part of a $50,000 sweepstake!

For any other people considering Solaris I’d recommend signing up for the free training while it lasts as it will give you a head start on the nitty gritty of Solaris.

More about my adventures into Solaris later.

Allan Lykke Christensen » System administration

Setting JAVA_HOME on Ubuntu

Getting to know Solaris