How to install java and set JAVA_HOME correctly in Ubuntu —18 March 2008

Install Java 6 like this: (Note: the package is in multiverse)

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Edit /etc/jvm, add this line to the top of the list: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Thanks to the above step, the java executable will find the right version of java. You can confirm this with java -version. However, setting JAVA_HOME is a completely different matter.

These commands will detect, set and verify JAVA_HOME:

. /usr/share/java-common/java-common.sh
eval $(jvm_config)
export JAVA_HOME
echo $JAVA_HOME