Installing Java JDK 1.6 on CentOS 5.0

The first step in the processs of installing an Open-Xchange server is to install a working Java JDK and JRE. This is a relatively easy process in CentOS 5.0.

1. Follow this link and select which version of the JDK to install. At the time of this writting the most current version is JDK 1.6 Update 3.

2. Accept (if we so desire) the licencing agreement and proceed to download the "Linux RPM in self-extracting file". Save this to your home directory.

3. From the command line, excecute the following:

chmod +x jdk-6u1-linux-i586-rpm.bin
./jdk-6u1-linux-i586-rpm.bin

4. Accept the next licencing agreement to extract the Java rpm. Then execute the following:

rpm -Uvh jdk-6u3-linux-i586.rpm

5. Once the RPM is installed we must still confirm that we are using the correct version of Java. To do so, excute the following.

/usr/sbin/alternatives --config java

the following will be displayed

There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.

  Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
   1           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
*+ 2           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-sun/bin/java

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2

If "2" is not selected, then select it.

And there it is. We now have the latest version of Java installed and selected.

P.S.
Next posting will be on installing ant and other base components of the system.
External links
- CentOS Java