Installing Java on CentOS
Verified as of CentOS 5.8, Java 6. CentOS 6 users: fucking switch to Debian already. Is something wrong with you? Do you like being abused by your vendors?
From Package Management (Yum)
OpenJDK is available via EPEL, from the Fedora project. Install EPEL before proceeding.
You didn't install EPEL. Go install EPEL. The directions are in the EPEL FAQ.
Now install the JDK:
sudo yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel
Or just the runtime:
sudo yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk
The RPMs place the appropriate binaries in /usr/bin.
Applications that can't autodetect the JDK may need JAVA_HOME set to
/usr/lib/jvm/java-openjdk.
By Hand
The Java SE Development Kit
7
tarballs can be installed by hand. Download the “Linux x64” .tar.gz version,
then unpack it in /opt:
cd /opt
tar xzf ~/jdk-7u45-linux-x64.tar.gz
This will create a directory named /opt/jdk1.7.0_45 (actual version number
may vary) containing a ready-to-use Java dev kit.
You will need to add the JDK's bin directory to PATH if you want commands
like javac and java to work without fully-qualifying the directory:
cat > /etc/profile.d/oracle_jdk <<'ORACLE_JDK'
PATH="${PATH}:/opt/jdk1.7.0_45/bin"
export PATH
ORACLE_JDK
(This will not affect non-interactive use; setting PATH for non-interactive programs like build servers is beyond the scope of this document. Learn to use your OS.)
Installation this way does not interact with the alternatives system (but you can set that up by hand if you need to).
For tools that cannot autodetect the JDK via PATH, you may need to set
JAVA_HOME to /opt/jdk1.7.0_45.