On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 05:43:05PM +1100, Leslie Katz wrote:

I posted a message a short time ago and don't know how to edit it, assuming that's possible, so I send this follow-on message.

I kept looking for an answer to my problem after sending my original post and just found it.

I record it, just in case it should be of use to someone who searches the archive later with a similar problem.

As root, I did:

mv /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/java.old ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_09/bin/java /usr/bin/java

You didn't say which linux distribution you were using. I'm going to guess "ubuntu" :) Ubuntu comes default with the Free gcj implementation of java, so /usr/bin/java will point to that by default. Unfortunately, the gcj implementation isn't yet feature complete with sun's java, which is why many people manually install sun's JRE. (Now that sun have announced that their runtime will become Free software, distributions will be legally allowed to include it for users to re-distribute.) In debian-based systems, there is an "alternatives" based system for deciding which program to run when there are several programs installed to do the same thing (for example if you have "vim" and "nvi" install, or in this case, gcj java and sun java). The "proper" way to tell debian which alternative you want is to use the update-alternatives program, although unfortunately this is one of those cryptic command line tools that is hard to use unless you already know how to use it :) This program handles the creation of the symbolic links for you. John