1. Now you need to find the actual location of your JDK installation and indicate to LINUX to accept your choice.

Type the following:
updatedb;locate javac |grep bin

You will see an entry like this:
/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_02/bin/javac

Here /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_02 is the actual JAVA_HOME for your machine. Note this as you will need it to run the future commands.

2. Then you need to run the alternatives command to instruct LINUX to recognize Sun’s JVM.

alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_02/bin/java 100
alternatives –install /usr/bin/jar jar /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_02/bin/jar 100
alternatives –install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_02/bin/javac 100

You can do this for other Java executables too, should you need them, following the same pattern.

Note: If alternatives is not in your path then use locate alternatives to locate it.

3. Finally you should configure alternative to use Sun’s JVM as the default JVM. To do this type:

/usr/sbin/alternatives –config java

This will present you with at least 2 options. Choose the one for Sun’s JVM. Similarly repeat the process for other commands.

Now you are done configuring LINUX for the most part. Type

java -version
and you should see something like this:

java version “1.6.0_02-ea”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_02-ea-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.6.0_02-ea-b02, mixed mode, sharing)