Installing Sun Java Development Kits

Since the Oracle software makes use of Sun's JDK, and because I thought it would be prudent to have a few versions of it, I decided to download and install the following versions of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE):

• J2SDK/J2RE - 1.4
• JDK/JRE - 5.0
  
• JDK 6 Update 2
  

To download the latest version (currently version 6 update 2), go to the following link:

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

Then, click on the "Download" button next to "JDK 6 Update 2". On the next page, click on the radio button next to "Accept License Agreement" and then look for the appropriate platform (eg., "Linux Platform - Java(TM) SE Development Kit 6 Update 2"). I downloaded the jdk-6u2-linux-i586-rpm.bin file.

To download the other versions, go to the following link:

http://java.sun.com/products/archive/

Then, scroll down the page until you first find the "JDK/JRE - 5.0". Notice the drop-down listbox next to this. At the time of this writing, the highest version of 5.0 in the listbox was "5.0 Update 11". Then, click on the "Go" button, and then on the next page click on the "Download JDK" link. This gave me a file named jdk-1_5_0_11-linux-i586-rpm.bin.

Next, going back to the archive page, search for the string, "J2SDK/J2RE - 1.4". Next to this, there is again a drop-down listbox where the most recent version is labeled as "1.4.2_14". Again, click on the "Go" button next to this, and when the next page loads, click on the " Download J2SDK" link. This gave me a file called j2sdk-1_4_2_15-linux-i586-rpm.bin.

So, now having these files, I transferred the files to my servers and ran the following commands to install them. The commands are run as root, and it is important to install them in this order:

$ su - root
# chmod +x j2sdk-1_4_2_15-linux-i586-rpm.bin
# ./j2sdk-1_4_2_15-linux-i586-rpm.bin
# rpm -Uvh j2sdk-1_4_2_15-linux-i586-rpm
# chmod +x jdk-1_5_0_11-linux-i586-rpm.bin
# ./jdk-1_5_0_11-linux-i586-rpm.bin
# chmod +x jdk-6u2-linux-i586-rpm.bin
# ./jdk-6u2-linux-i586-rpm.bin

Simply scroll through the license agreements when they are shown, and reply with "yes" when asked if you agree. There is no need to run the RPM command for the 1.5 and 1.6 versions, as they are automatically run for you.

# ls -l /usr/java

default
j2sdk1.4.2_15
jdk1.5.0_11
jdk1.6.0_02
latest

The default file is actually a symbolic link that points to the latest file, which is also a symbolic link that points to the jdk1.6.0_02 directory.

That's it! Easy as pie!