Installing Java (Sun JDK 1.6.0) on CentOS 5

This is a quick and dirty guide to installing java on CentOS5.

NOTE: do not log in as root to perform this installation, but you will need credentials with su command. During install, substitute 'user_name' with your login handle.

STEP I: SYS PREP

1. Open terminal

2. Set up working directories (in this example it's ~/rpmbuild)

$ mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/{SOURCES,SRPMS,SPECS,RPMS,tmp,BUILD}

3. Create ~/.rpmmacros

$ echo "%_topdir /home/user_name/rpmbuild" >> .rpmmacros
$ echo "%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp" >> .rpmmacros

4. Log in as root and use YUM to install following packages

$ su root

Password:
# yum install -y rpm-build gcc gcc-c++ redhat-rpm-config

# yum -y install jpackage-utils

# su user_name
$

STEP II: INSTALL JAVA

1. Download JDK 1.6 update 7 self-extracting RPM version (jdk-6u7-linux-i586.bin) from Sun to ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/

2. Download and build java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.7-1jpp.nosrc.rpm package

$ cd ~/rpmbuild
$ curl -L -O http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/jpackage/1.7/generic/SRPMS.non-free/java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.7-1jpp.nosrc.rpm
$ rpmbuild --rebuild java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.7-1jpp.nosrc.rpm

don't get freaked out by the errors or that it could take a little while, it's ok. Verify that RPMS directory in rpmbuild contains i586 directory with rpms.

3. su to root and migrate rpms to local yum repository

# yum localinstall ~user_name/rpmbuild/RPMS/i586/java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.7-1jpp.i586.rpm

NOTE: if you get "NOT SIGNED" issue (and most likely you will), resolve by the following work-around

- install X11 library to resolve libXP.so.6 dependency

# yum install libXp-devel.i386

- then plain old rpm

# rpm -Uvh ~user_name/rpmbuild/RPMS/i586/java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.7-1jpp.i586.rpm

4. Login as root to configure alternatives system to use new JDK

[root@blah]# alternatives --config java

5. Verify install

$ java -version

it should display java version "1.6.0_07 ....."