How to ACTUALLY install Java on Linux?

Question

I have a Ubuntu Server.

From the terminal, how should I install JDK?

In this guide it says to use this command:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-jdk

But on Suns website, it says JDK includes the JRE, so why the JRE in the line above?

Anybody know how to actually install Java?

Every guide and every forum shows different ways of doing it.

BTW: It is a VPS (virtual private server)

Thanks

Answer 1

Regardless of how Sun's Java packages work on other platforms, for Ubuntu the JDK package does not depend on the JRE package.

Both the JDK and JRE packages depend on the -bin package, but installing -bin this way marks it a non-automatic install.

Answer 2

Here is what you get from each package:

sun-java6-bin: Basefiles to execute Java programs

sun-java6-jre: Localization files and everything you need to fulfill the "full" Runtime requirements. Depends on bin.

sun-java6-jdk: Everything you need to compile stuff. This does not nessecarily need the Runtime to execute java programs. Depends on bin.

So you can write your command shorter as:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-jdk

Answer 3

Whilst you are correct that when you normally download a JDK from Sun (e.g. if you were to download the Windows installer) it would include a JRE it is common for things on Debian (and Ubuntu) to be packaged in a more modular way. e.g. the documentation and source (again normally included in a JDK download) are in other separate packages: sun-java6-demo and sun-java6-source.

Answer 4

Okey, this is my second answer to this question, and this is how you install a current JDK on linux! (Its for Debian, but Ubuntu users shouldn't see many differences).

Tools you need:

apt-get install fakeroot zip unzip mkisofs

Now go to java.sun.com and download a current JDK6. It should be names something like jdk-6u20-linux-i586.bin!

We don't want to install it directly to make it behave like a good package. So we use fakeroot to install it as someuser.

mv jdk-6u20-linux-i586.bin ~someuser
su - someuser
fakeroot
chmod a+x jdk-6u20-linux-i586.bin
sh ./jdk-6u20-linux-i586.bin
cd jdk1.6.0_20/man
for i in `find -type f`; do gzip $i; done;
cd ../..
# Tar the results to have them handy for the real installation
tar cfz jdk1.6.0_20.tgz jdk1.6.0_20/

Now we leave fakeroot (Ctrl-D) and the someuser-shell (Ctrl-D again), and install our tar to /usr/local:

cd /usr/local
tar xfvz ~someuser/jdk1.6.0_20.tgz
ln -s /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_20/ /usr/local/jdk
ln -s /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_20/jre/ /usr/local/jre

for program in appletviewer apt extcheck idlj jar jarsigner java javac \
           javadoc javah javap javaws jconsole jdb jhat jinfo jmap \
           jps jrunscript jsadebugd jstack jstat jstatd jvisualvm \
           keytool native2ascii orbd pack200 policytool rmic rmid \
           rmiregistry schemagen serialver servertool tnameserv \
           unpack200 wsgen wsimport xjc ; do \
    update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/$program" "$program" \
    "/usr/local/jdk1.6.0_20/bin/$program" 1130 \
    --slave "/usr/share/man/man1/$program.1.gz" "$program.1.gz" \
    "/usr/local/jdk1.6.0_20/man/man1/$program.1.gz"; done;

Nun testen ob alles ok ist:

java -version
man java

Done.

Answer 5

Just for free-software's sake:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

Answer 6

This is the right way to do it on debian based systems. The reason they're including it is probably to secure the dependencies (even though apt solves them automatically)